Competition and collaboration in the stevia industry

03-Aug-2010 - Last updated on 28-Sep-2021 at 09:14 GMT

Representatives of stevia suppliers PureCircle, GLG Life Tech and Blue California spoke with FoodNavigator-USA.com at IFT about areas in which members of the stevia industry can work together - even as competing companies.

At the recent IFT show in Chicago, James Kempland, vice president of marketing at GLG Life Tech, Cecilia McCollum, executive vice president at Blue California, and Jason Hecker, vice president of global marketing at PureCircle, discussed the distinction between collaboration and competition in the stevia industry.

In particular, they talked about the possibility of a stevia trade association, and the values that they all hold in common. These include ensuring consumer trust in stevia through product quality, safety, and good taste, in order to promote it as part of the solution for health problems like diabetes and obesity.

3 comments

stevia as a sweetener alone

Posted by ramswamy ganesan, 02 September 2010 - 21:47 GMT

the intensity of the sweetness is so strong, that the taste buds get saturated and cannot raise the e-volt level any further for the brain to receive further taste signals. to use stevia as sweetener , i suggest suitable filler material as per the food standards.

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Stevia as a sweetener alone

Posted by Brian Wright, 13 August 2010 - 10:30 GMT

As Amir pointed out, stevia has some hurdles to overcome when used alone. The trouble I've had using stevia alone is that the sweet, while it can be intense, is not the same as sugar. The sweetness hits the palette at a different time than sugar. Sugar has a sweet that hits the palette immediately and lasts from beginning to end. Stevia has a sweet that hits the palette later and doesn't last as long as sugar. The issue, then, is that stevia will need to be mixed with another sweetener to cover the entire sweet spectrum like sugar. I've found that mixing stevia and saccharin solves this problem. I know that saccharin has gotten a previous bad rap due to previous questionable studies. But, I trust saccharin more than, say, aspartame or sucralose.

When I use stevia to sweeten I mix it with saccharin to even the sweet. This works particularly well on top of fruit, on cereal, in soda, in tomato dishes (hot or cold) and may or may not work in some baked goods. The ratio I've used is usually 1 to 1, but may be adjusted to taste or product.

I know that some manufacturers are mixing stevia with sugar alcohols, but I don't trust sugar alcohols. Of course, the problem with baking is creating the same consistency and volume that sugar provides. So, the absence of sugar provides challenges to bakers. For soda manufacturers, though, a stevia+saccharin mix makes a very good diet soda with little to no aftertaste from either sweetener.

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Stevia development

Posted by Amir M. Saraj, 08 August 2010 - 06:10 GMT

It is more than three years that we work on Stevia in our country, we are very interested to have had more details about solving the after taste of it, in line of development of natural sweeteners as Stevia.

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