Stevia on the table?

obmar · Site Admin Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 5697

Stevia on the table?

It does seem that Aspartame is falling from grace and sucralose is not doing as well as they hoped so maybe at last these companies are realising that we care about what additives we shove down our throats, lets just hope they don’t have to take out great chunks of the Rainforest to put Stevia on the map!Some supermarkets are planning to withdraw Aspartame BUT replace it with sucralose so we must still be very vigilant on reading labels.

Also 14/05/2007 - A European court has said that the marketing of the sweetener Splenda is misleading to consumers, and has ordered that its advertising slogans be ceased because they violate French consumer protection laws.

‘Agribusiness Cargill has teamed up with Coca-Cola to market a new calorie-free natural sweetener made from the South American herb Stevia.

A spokeswoman said she could confirm reports about the existence of the sweetener, but was unable to give further details.

According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, Coca-Cola has filed 24 patent applications for the product, which has been tentatively named Rebiana, and plans to use the sweetener in certain of its beverages.’ http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=77035

obmar · Site Admin Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 5697

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stevia

A young Stevia rebaudiana plant
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae

Division: Magnoliophyta

Class: Magnoliopsida

Order: Asterales

Family: Asteraceae

Genus: Stevia

Species
About 150 species, including:
Stevia eupatoria
Stevia ovata
Stevia plummerae
Stevia rebaudiana
Stevia salicifolia
Stevia serrata

Stevia (also called sweetleaf, sweet leaf or sugarleaf) is a genus of about 150 species of herbs and shrubs in the sunflower family (Asteraceae), native to subtropical and tropical South America and Central America. As a sweetener, stevia's taste has a slower onset and longer duration than that of sugar, although some of its extracts may have a bitter or liquorice-like aftertaste at high concentrations.

With its extracts having up to 300 times the sweetness of sugar, stevia has garnered attention with the rise in demand for low-carbohydrate, low-sugar food alternatives. Stevia also has shown promise in medical research for treating such conditions as obesity[1] and high blood pressure.[2][3] Stevia has a negligible effect on blood glucose, even enhancing glucose tolerance,[4] therefore it is attractive as a natural sweetener to diabetics and others on carbohydrate-controlled diets.[5] However, health and political controversies have limited stevia's availability in many countries; for example, the United States banned it in the early 1990s. Stevia is widely used as a sweetener in Japan, and it is now available in the US and Canada as a dietary supplement, although not as a food additive. Rebiana is the trade name for a stevia-derived sweetener being developed jointly by The Coca-Cola Company and Cargill with the intent of marketing in several countries and gaining regulatory approval in the US and EU.

The Inquisitor · Joined: 17 Jun 2006 Posts: 772

obmar,

I tried some of this the other day, and I was not at all impressed. It has a different taste than the normal stuff, probably just because I'm used to the chemicals. The one I prefer right now is called Splenda. It actually comes from sugar but is pure synthetics. They've managed to make a chemical out of something so that the chemical tastes almost identical to the original.

But it's still synthetic.

obmar · Site Admin Joined: 14 Apr 2006 Posts: 5697

Sugar is everywhere and everything.

and it is not too good, I was told.

Stevia is now grown here and in the last Halal Hub exposition
I saw quite a few trying to market it, in all sorts of packaging.