In the last few days before the administration changes hands, the FDA has been hard at work making changes.

Here are two of the most interesting rulings:

FDA Says Diet Coke Plus Mislabeled

In 2007, Coke started selling Diet Coke Plus, also called Coca Light Plus, which is the diet cola with added vitamins and minerals.

Eight ounces of the beverage has 15% of your Reference Daily Intake of niacin, B6, B12, and 10% of your zinc and magnesium, according to the company.

The trouble was not the product but the name, ruled the FDA. "Plus" is a regulated word in the food and beverage industry. Whether that "plus" is meant to indicate added sugar, vitamins or even water, it must meet certain FDA requirements to carry that name.

A food labeled "plus" must contain at least 10% more of the Reference Daily Intake or Daily Reference Value compared with the usual amount. The Diet Coke Plus label does not mention the increased amount of vitamins and minerals. However, Diet Coke Plus was cited for breaking another regulation: the "Jelly Bean" rule.
From the warning letter sent to Coke: "Your product Diet Coke Plus is a carbonated beverage. The policy on fortification … states that the FDA does not consider it appropriate to fortify snack foods such as carbonated beverages."

This doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the actual product. It means that the FDA thinks the product was mislabeled. This month Coke responded: "We take seriously the issues raised by the FDA in its letter. This does not involve any health or safety issues, and we believe the label on Diet Coke Plus complies with FDA's policies and regulations."

It's not clear what will happen with the Diet Coke Plus ruling. The FDA has been known to reverse decisions, or Coke could change the name or labeling. We'll keep you posted.

Stevia Approved for Use in Food, Beverages

Also last month, the FDA approved stevia for use in food and beverages. The zero-calorie sweetener, which is a refined version of a South American plant, had previously been marketed only as a dietary supplement. The FDA concluded " that it has no objection to [stevia] at 95 percent purity or above, having GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status as a general purpose sweetener for food and drink, not just as a supplement."

There's quite a demand for the sweetener: Coke will launch Sprite Green this month and a line of Odwalla juice drinks sweetened with Truvia, the brand name of the stevia that Coke and Cargill have partnered to develop.

Meanwhile, Pepsi will soon unveil three flavors of its SoBe Lifewater sweetened with its proprietary version of stevia, PureVia.

Stay tuned to SparkPeople for more news about the plant-based sweetener, which is said to have a negligible effect on blood sugar. A few of us here did an unofficial taste test of stevia awhile back.

Two of us didn't care for it and thought it had a chalky, fake taste and a strange, too-sweet aftertaste. However, it's important to mention that those two are not fans of any sweeteners. Two other co-workers liked it. They said it was sweet but not too sweet (though you use a much smaller volume of it than you would sugar), and it was perfectly undetectable in coffee. They'd use it in coffee, tea or other beverages.

We'll do a real taste test when we spot stevia-sweetened drinks on store shelves.

Do you drink Diet Coke Plus instead of other diet sodas? Why? Have you tried stevia? What did you think?