Is the stevia plant safe to eat? Yes, for most healthy people it is. Extension sources treat stevia as an edible herb. People chew, brew, and dry the leaves at home all the time. Pick one fresh leaf off the plant and chew it. You get a quick burst of sweetness on your tongue. That taste is how a lot of growers first prove to themselves the leaf is good. The sweet hit comes fast, and it lingers for a bit.
The sweet taste comes from natural plant compounds. They are called steviol glycosides, and the two main ones are stevioside and rebaudioside A. These edible stevia leaves pack a big sweet punch into a tiny bit of plant. One leaf can taste sweeter than a spoon of sugar. So a small amount goes a long way in your tea, your coffee, or your food.
There is one point that trips people up. It has nothing to do with safety, though. The FDA treats the pure glycosides, 95% or more pure, as no-objection GRAS sweeteners. That is the stevia GRAS status you see on packaged goods at the store. The whole leaf and crude extracts sit in a different bucket. They are not cleared to sell as sweeteners under Import Alert 45-06.
Read that rule the right way. It is a label and sales rule for firms that want to sell the leaf as a sweetener. The rule covers how a product gets sold in stores. Your own garden leaf falls outside it. You can still chew a fresh leaf or steep dried ones in hot water at home. The alert speaks to commerce, while your kitchen use stays a separate thing.
Growing and using your own stevia leaves at home is unrelated to the commercial sweetener rules, which only restrict selling whole-leaf and crude extracts as sweeteners.
Safety groups have looked at the pure glycosides in depth. The JECFA daily intake they list is 4 mg per kg of body weight each day, in steviol terms. For a person who weighs 70 kg, that comes to about 280 mg a day. That is far more than you would ever use to sweeten food. The glycosides bring zero calories, and they do not raise your blood sugar. None of this is health advice, so treat it as plain background.
The leaf is the part you eat, and it tastes best just before the plant flowers. The sweetness sits highest in the leaves at that stage. Snip whole stems in the morning once the dew dries off. Strip the leaves and lay them on a screen or a tray in a warm, airy spot. They dry in a day or two and turn crisp. You can also hang small bunches upside down in a dry room.
For my own use, I keep a small stevia plant on the windowsill and dry the spare leaves each fall. I found the dried leaves hold their sweet taste for months in a sealed jar. You can grow, dry, and store your own leaves the same way without worry. Crush a few dried leaves into hot water for a sweet tea. Or grind them into a fine powder and stir it into a batter when you bake. The powder will not brown or rise like sugar, so it works best where you only want the sweet note.
Go easy on the amount, since the sweet taste is so strong. I recommend a pinch first, then taste before you add more. Too much can leave a faint bitter note in the cup. If you take daily medicine or manage a health issue, ask your doctor before you make stevia a regular habit. So is stevia safe to grow and eat at home? For most people the answer is a clear yes. Just treat your own leaves as food, and keep each portion small.
Read the full article: Stevia Plant: Grow, Harvest, and Use It
