Have you ever taken a swig from a soda can and had that tongue-smacking sugary coating stuck like glue inside your mouth that makes your teeth squeak? Not to mention the distinct aftertaste as an unhappy bonus to drinking artificial sweeteners. Instead of leaving me wanting more, I usually want my toothbrush, but there may be an alternative on the horizon. Stevia—an all-natural, calorie-free, sweet leaf shrub (pictured in photograph at right) found largely in Paraguay—is fast becoming the alternative sweetener that NutraSweet was to the 1980s, without the synthetic aspartame or gritty aftertaste. With 300 times the sweetness of regular table sugar, having been used for centuries in teas throughout Latin America and Japan, and used to lower blood pressure in its native Paraguay, stevia might just be the next health craze to take root in America, if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves its use.

Early explorers found stevia’s sweet nature by chewing on the leaves and noting that the flavor lasted long in their mouths. As far back as 1913, scientists tried to bring stevia to the U.S. because of its popularity as a sweetener, but the welcome mat wasn’t dragged out. Sugar companies saw the threat and stevia wasn’t allowed to be introduced into the market. However, by 1988, stevia-products accounted for almost half of all Japan’s sweetened items being used in bread, pickles, ice cream, candies, and soft drinks.

A Seattle-based company is following Japan’s lead, now serving up Zevia, a zero-calorie, zero-fat soft drink sold as a dietary supplement in stores across the United States. With a comparable amount of caffeine to popular diet sodas on the shelf, Zevia plans to reinvent ideas associated with diet drinks. Trying to break an addiction to diet soda can be hard and Zevia wants to help. With four flavors: cola, root beer, orange, and twist (lemon-lime), the producers encourage you to drink up. I tried Zevia for my research and found it to have no aftertaste and the taste was comparable to that of diet Coke or Pepsi, and, in fact, I couldn’t tell the difference.

The U.S. hasn’t yet adopted the wide use of stevia in a lot of its products, but it is sold in the states in powder form, liquid form, as an FDA-approved dietary supplements. Researchers are concerned with the safety of the herb providing that the exposure to sunlight might have had an effect on its chemical makeup, but a new study being published in the October issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry  efutes that claim by showing that after a week in the sun, stevia’s chemical compounds were still intact.

Pending toxicity reports and clinical trials regarding side effects using large amounts of the herb, stevia is awaiting the green light to be used in foods. Food and Chemical Toxicology reported recently on eight studies done regarding stevia in which three of the studies’ authors wrote that a component of stevia is, “safe for human consumption.”

On the opposing side however, Michael Jacobson, executive director of the D.C.-based nutrition advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest Group, disagrees with the new research debunking decades old research that there might be possible genetic defects associated with its use. The fact that the genetic abnormalities were already shown from research using various components of the sweetener throughout the 1970s, is proof enough that more tests should be done before massive human consumption, Jacobson says, “It’s a warning flag.”

If the FDA lifts its ban of stevia only approved for use in dietary supplements, the media coverage will soar. Coca-Cola as well as PepsiCo already both have a no-calorie sweetened drink that caters to the massive diet-soda crowd waiting in the wings. If business professionals are correct and the FDA regards substances made with stevia in the next two months as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS), the dueling soda manufacturers will launch their alternative soft drinks immediately. Celebrities will be sponsoring them, diabetics will love them, and my beloved Vitamin Water will surely be tossed aside in favor of a carbonated, nonfat diet soda substitute. Pending FDA approval, with zero calories and zero fat and the same caffeine as regular soft drinks, stevia-products may be a sweet deal after all.