The GOOD Alternative Sweetner - Stevia

[zengrifter]

The Bittersweet Story of the Stevia Herb

The sweet stevia herb has had a long, safe history of use as a food and medicine in South America and Asia, but in many Western countries it is illegal as a food or food additive but legal as a dietary supplement.

© by Jenny Hawke © 2002 NEXUS Magazine
Email: jhawke@nexusmagazine.com

It's easy to grow, wonderful as a sweetener, contains medicinal properties, is non-caloric, safe to cook with, and has great potential in agriculture. It's widely used in South America and Asia. So why isn't stevia a household name in the rest of the world?

Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni is a herb native to Paraguay. It is also known as "honey yerba" and "honeyleaf" and by other variations of these names. The mature plant stands from around 65 centimetres (26 inches) to as tall as 180 cm (72 in) when cultivated or growing naturally in fertile soil. Historical records show that the leaves have been used for hundreds of years by the Guarani Indians, who named the plant caá-êhê. The main use was as a sweetener, particularly in their green tea, known as maté. It was also used in medicine or as a snack. Stevia's leaf is estimated to be 150 to 300 times sweeter than refined sugar.

M. S. Bertoni, in the late 1800s, was the first European to document stevia. In 1931, French chemists extracted stevioside from the herb in the form of an intensely sweet, white crystalline compound. The herb was then considered for use as a sweetener during the food shortages experienced by Britain during World War II. However, interest waned when sugar again became available.

Since this time, stevia has been used extensively in many Asian and South American countries, but the USA, Canada, Australia and Europe have not embraced the herb as a sweetener, opting either for sugar from readily available sugar cane or sugar beet, or for aspartame-based and other artificial sweeteners as a sugar substitute.

More than 150 varieties of stevia exist, but Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni is the only sweet stevia plant. Carbohydrate-based compounds from the stevia leaf can be isolated to glycosides known as steviosides. Stevioside is a glycoside of the diterpene derivative steviol, and is a natural component of the plant. Stevioside is intensely sweet and is present at levels up to 13% in the leaves of Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni. Rebaudiosides and dulcosides are other sweet chemical constituents of the plant that can be extracted.

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