Stevia - natural sugar alternative

Sweeteners are on everyone’s lips. Along with the desire to reduce sugar, there is growing demand for sugar substitutes. In this focus report, we show you why we think stevia is the solution, and how you can overcome the challenges involved in using it. 

When the Milan Declaration was expanded to include sugar, it was a clear signal of the growing need to reduce sugar in foods. It also spurred an increase in demand for non-sugar sweeteners, despite the fact that the perception of artificial sweeteners is often negative. Artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, acesulfame-k, saccharin, and cyclamate, are numerous and have been around for a long time. 

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Stevia as a natural alternative to artificial sweeteners

It is only recently that stevia products have been put back on the table as viable, natural sweeteners. The first generation of stevia products scared off many consumers with their bitter-metallic taste, sweetness plateau, and liquorice aftertaste. As a result, stevia’s main use was only for partially reducing sugar. Today, however, this only applies to very cheap, simple stevia products; the new generation of stevia products can be used for 100% sugar reduction. 

Advantages of stevia:

The main motivation behind reducing sugar is better nutrition and health. Because many artificial sweeteners have a negative reputation among consumers, it makes all the more sense to switch to stevia products, which are perceived as “natural”. The following advantages of stevia are worth emphasizing:

• Perception as “natural”
• High stability against heat and acid – even over long storage periods
• Clean taste of high-quality products (e.g. TASTEVA)
• 250 times the sweetening power of saccharose

Disadvantages of stevia:

When looking for suitable stevia products, everyone runs into the following problem: either the product is expensive or it has a poor sweetness profile. To address this, Tate & Lyle responded by bringing out cost-optimized stevia mixtures in their OPTIMIZER line. The mixture allows them to be used even for high sugar reductions, on a par with the much more expensive Reb A 97-99 products, for example. 

Cost aside, stevia has another problem in common with artificial sweeteners in that it lacks mouthfeel. Unlike sugar, they do not act as texturizers or humectants.

Alternative texturizers & humectants

Sugar has more advantages than just its sweetening power. For example, it produces a pleasant, full mouthfeel in drinks and makes for a moist, light crumb in baked goods. In reduced-sugar foods, these effects are often attained by adding soluble fibre, sugar alcohols, or hydrocolloids. Sugar alcohols such as erythritol can only be used in small quantities due to digestibility issues. For this reason, more producers opt for other alternatives like soluble corn fibre (PROMITOR). In addition to its advantage of no E-number declaration, corn fibre can be used with no trouble in higher concentrations.