There's a lot of Stevia worship going on at the moment, and clever marketers are keen to take full advantage.
When I first opened a specialist sugar free food retail business eight years ago, I had never heard of stevia, but I was about to. The species Stevia rebaudiana, native to South America, is widely grown for its sweet leaves.
Consumers looking for sugar free alternatives were increasingly turning to stevia as a safe, natural alternative sweetener, and I was constantly asked about which products we sold that were sweetened with stevia. At the time, the answer was "nothing", because back then it was not widely used in commercial applications. We have sold stevia in various forms, powder, liquid, tablets and sachets. In these forms it is suitable for use in tea and coffee, and increasingly consumers have been trialling it as a replacement to sugar in their home baking.
Over the last few years, stevia has slowly been making its way into commercially produced products, and nowadays if you look hard enough, you can find numerous dietary products containing stevia.
Most recently, manufacturers of sugar free confectionery have been starting to use stevia as a sweetener, but I am increasingly skeptical as to the motivation of this move. Let me explain a few of the basics about what sugar does, and why replacing sugar is not as simple as it seems.
People think of sugar primarily as a sweetener, but the truth is that sugar does so much more than sweeten. Sugar acts as a flavour enhancer, preservative, antioxidant, bulking agent and
setting agent. So, when you're manufacturing a sugar free product, it's not just a matter of removing the sugar - you have to replace it with another product that not only sweetens, but depending on the product, also fulfills the other chemical properties of sugar.
Sugar substitutes broadly fit into one of two categories: one for one sweeteners, and high intensity sweeteners. One for one sweeteners include polyols such as isomalt, maltitol, xylitol, lactitol and erythritol. These are typically used in the same proportions as sugar in products such as candies, chocolates, biscuits, etc. High intensity sweeteners are completely different. Aspartame, which is used in most diet soft drinks is added in proportions of approximately 1:10,000 (regular Coke contains around 10% sugar).
Why am I telling you this? Stevia is a high intensity sweetener. That means in most products, you simply cannot remove sugar, and replace it with stevia. It just won't work. Nor can you use stevia to SOLELY replace other "one for one" sweeteners. So here's the kicker. When products are all of a sudden marketed as "Now sweetened with Stevia", you need to understand that in most cases stevia has been ADDED TO the other sweeteners that were previously in the product, and is NOT REPLACING the other sweeteners that were previously in the product.
There are arguments that stevia, being 100% natural is a far better alternative than "chemical sweeteners". It's rare to see the word "stevia" without the word "Natural" nearby. It's a totally reasonable argument, and it's the main reason stevia has been rapidly gaining in popularity, but when making decisions, one always needs to consider all the facts. Personally, I am satisfied that stevia is a safe product and is a good alternative to other high intensity sweeteners, but when you've been selling sugar free products for eight years, you can recognise when sugar free wool is being pulled over your eyes.
I'm not for an instant suggesting there's anything wrong with or unhealthy about stevia, just that the use of stevia in most confectionery products is not about your health, it's ultimately about your dollar. All aboard the Stevia Bandwagon!
Mark Huddleston is the director of Sugar Free Zone. www.sugarfreezone.com.au
