I happened to glance at the BBC news site yesterday, and saw this intriguing article about the quest to find a replacement for refined, white sugar. I’d agree with a lot of what the author said, but with one MAJOR caveat:
STEVIA is not an artificial sweetener. The fact that it is not sugar does not in any way make it artificial or synthetic (I know, artificial is synthetic). Stevia is just as much plant-sourced as sugar is.
Vernon Pope 
I have a sweet tooth. Stevia is my choice because (supposedly) it does not raise the glycemic index. Same with xylitol. Xylitol can give you the runs, however, if you eat a lot of it. I use stevia a lot but my husband hates it, so if I cook something, like whipping cream, I use xylitol. My husband is fine with it. You can cook with xylitol because it has a consistency like granulated sugar. However, you cannot cook with stevia. It doesn’t work.
My wife only uses Stevia, but then with the Paleo Diet we don’t do a lot of cooking where sweetness is a desired outcome. She puts Stevia in her tea, and smoothies.
I must be a very odd duck for an American. I don’t sweeten anything I eat. It’s either sweet naturally, or I eat it as is.
Les is pretty much the same as you. He adds a half banana in a smoothy and calls it sweet… Not ME. I like SWEET!!
It’s all good. Variety IS the spice of life.
I love stevia and it keeps me from going on a Pepsi bender. ha-ha I have tried xylitol, and maybe it was the brand I tried, but it tasted like chemicals. I have also tried stevia brands that were like this. So, I just stick with Sweet Leaf stevia. It works for me. He based his opinion on the “wonder berry” on one brand rather than trying several. That seems a little biased. I am also a little scared that this guy says that there should be “reassessment of today’s massive, unsupervised consumption of these substances”. Unsupervised? We are talking about stevia here, and not marijuana or cocaine.
Right, Barbara. I have my favorite stevia brand in powder and my favorite in liquid. I always regret it when I stray. I seem to like all the xylitol brands that I have tried. It is granulated much like white sugar. I agree with you regarding the political aspects.