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The Food and Drug Administration agreed in December that rebaudioside A, an extract from the leaves of the stevia plant, is safe to add to food and drinks. Stevia has one distinct advantage over all the rest. Because it comes from a plant, marketers can call it a natural sweetener. And that allows companies that have invested millions in new stevia products to tap into two powerful markets at once: natural ingredients and low-calorie products. Two of the biggest backers, Cargill and Whole Earth Sweetener Company, earlier this year began rolling out packets of stevia-based sweeteners, called Truvia and PureVia respectively. The extract is in the companies' drinks, too. Among the new stevia products marketed as naturally sweetened are Sprite Green from Coca-Cola and Trop50, from the PepsiCo subsidiary Tropicana. It's essentially half water and half orange juice doctored with stevia.

The Food and Drug Administration has declared a natural zero-calorie sweetener derived from the herb stevia safe for use in foods and beverages, clearing a path for Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and other companies to market it in a variety of products. Coke will introduce a reduced-calorie version of Sprite, called Sprite Green, and some Odwalla juice drinks with the new sweetener this month. Pepsi will launch three flavors of a zero-calorie SoBe Lifewater next week, and an orange-juice drink called Trop50, containing half the calories and sugar of orange juice, in March.