London - It looks like sugar, acts like sugar and tastes a lot like sugar. But stevia is a sweetener with no calories, which is having a major impact on the food industry and some say could help to fight obesity and diabetes.
Unlike other sugar substitutes, stevia is an entirely natural product. Native to South America, it can be traced back thousands of years, to when the people of Paraguay and Brazil used it to sweeten foods.
Sold commercially in Japan for more than 40 years, it’s only in recent years that it’s been more widely available. But, it’s rapidly catching on, with an increase of 400 percent in US sales between 2008 and last year, as consumers are drawn to its sugar-like qualities, with zero guilt
Sugar company Silver Spoon has been quick to get a foothold in the market. Its TruVia product, a sugar substitute made with stevia, has become the second-best selling sugar substitute in the US since its launch in 2008. It has been on the markets in the UK and Europe since 2011, when stevia was approved for consumption by the European Food Safety Authority.
“In each country that we’ve launched in, the sugar-substitute category has grown following the launch of TruVia,” says Mark Brooks, global business director for TruVia consumer products. “You get the great taste, you get the functionality, and you just leave behind the calories for added sugar.”
But,
with complaints of a liquorice-like aftertaste, not all consumers have been happy with the sweetener. Dairy company Danone, for example, decided to change the recipe for its stevia-sweetened yoghurts because of poor feedback due to its aftertaste.
To combat the aftertaste, some companies are still including sugar in their stevia-sweetened products.
“We just launched a baking-blend product that gives you 75 percent less calories, but is 50 percent sugar because sugar does something and it’ll help your product bake,” Brooks says.
Silver Spoon marketing director Tony Lucas says that aside from a minimal amount of complaints, the vast majority of consumers enjoy TruVia. “As with any new food you launch, you get some people who really like the taste of it and some who aren’t so keen on the taste,” he said. “As we expected, we had one or two comments from people who didn’t like the taste, But, the vast majority think it’s fantastic.”
After trying stevia myself as a sweetener in a drink, I did not notice a bad or liquorice-like aftertaste. I was, however, surprised by how chemical it tasted, which is surprising considering it is the only natural sugar substitute.
Products made successfully with stevia may also have potential for helping to combat the growing problem of obesity. There are, of course, other zero-calorie sugar substitutes, but stevia is the only one of natural origin and consumers find that appealing.
“Stevia can help people enjoy natural-origin sweetness while reducing calories as part of a balanced diet,” says Dr Margaret Ashwell, a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Global Stevia Institute. “There are enormous opportunities for industry to meet national and international pledges to reduce sugar in products to help the obesity crisis.”
Stevia also allows consumers to satiate their sugar cravings guilt-free. Food scientist Jeya Henry, professor of nutrition and director of the Functional Food Centre at Oxford Brookes University, agrees it has a lot of potential for sating our collective sweet tooth.
“It’s much easier for people who don’t have diabetes to tell people not to eat sugar, but one of the driving forces of our life is the pleasure of food,” he says. “So, if you can apply the pleasure of food to stevia, why not?”
But, Henry is cautious about hailing it as a cure-all. “Stevia can make some contribution, but it is not a panacea for obesity,” he adds.
In the UK, stevia can be found in the reduced-calorie versions of Sprite, Nestea, Tropicana Orange Juice and various yoghurts.
Though the long-term effects of stevia have yet to be extensively analysed, Brooks said consumers should not be worried. “We invested in years of rigorous safety studies,” he said. “We would not bring a product to market unless we were confident we could recommend it.”
Consumers have no need to fear negative health effects from stevia, with its long history, says Henry. “It has been used for more than 3 000 years,” he says. “Everything we eat and do has a potential risk. Stevia is probably a pretty good bet in our contemporary society where people are always saying Mother Nature is better than anything synthetic.”
But Dr Robert Lustig, author of Fat Chance: The Bitter Truth About Sugar, says the lack of research on the long-term effects of stevia is alarming. He says because the body expects real sugar, when it is not given sugar, weight-loss goals could backfire.
“We don’t have the information yet,” he says. “And unfortunately we’re not going to be getting that information any time soon. So I have to remain agnostic on that point because the science, the data just isn’t there.”
Researchers at Purdue University in Indiana found that stevia was also better for your teeth. Unlike sugar, stevia does not cause tooth decay and can even fight it by preventing plaque from forming.
Though it is produced much like sugar, stevia is still much more expensive due partly to the fact that the demand for it is still much lower than that of sugar. Stevia can cost 10 times as much as sugar.
Despite its expense, more and more people are likely to continue to enjoy this zero-calorie product.
“The market will continue to grow,” Lucas predicts. “Each month, we’re selling more. People like that it’s natural and that it has zero calories, but they also like its granular texture, just like sugar.” – The Independent
STEVIA IN SOUTH AFRICA
The Department of Health authorised the use of stevia in South Africa in September last year.
Candarel now sells a stevia sweetener, packaged in green, which is no doubt aimed at consumers who are wary of its aspartame and sucralose products.
Huletts, too, has a EquiSweet sweetener with stevia, which has orange packaging.