06/07/07 Getting to know Stevia

Getting to know Stevia. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. The Stevia plant has long been known to be a natural alternative to sugar. Its leaves are 200 to 300 times as sweet as sugar and without any calories or carbohydrates. Recently the Cargill Company and Coca-Cola have teamed up to try and bring this product to the marketplace. Ann Tucker is in media relations for Cargill. TUCKER: People have been working to utilize stevia for decades. If this had been easy it would have been done before, it was hard to get to the right formula, the right taste. Part of the problem is there are a couple hundred varieties of the plant and each has a slightly different taste and even some have an aftertaste. Cargill and Coke have developed a standard formula they call Rebiana that Coke will be launching in foreign markets within the next 18 months. But what about the agricultural side? TUCKER: There is stevia being grown in the United States but right now it's supplying a very small niche market. The stevia we're going to be looking at is a very closed loop system so that Cargill will work with farmers, contract with farmers around the globe to grow certain plants. So we're trying to get to the same plants, a consistency that you can predict what it's going to taste like. Before this the stevia market has been all over the place. Currently stevia has not been approved by the FDA as a food additive. TUCKER: The FDA has approved it only as a dietary supplement at this point in time. Part of this is just about the fact that up until this point it has been a variable product. It's really finding out what's in it, what's in it all the time and making it the same. I remember when the sweetener saccharine came out in the 60's. We couldn't believe how sweet it was but then we weren't used to reading labels back then. Now in addition to saccharine we have aspartame, sucralose and several other compounds I can't pronounce. TUCKER: There's been a debate about other sweeteners, what we like to say is that it comes from a leaf not a lab. Or another one of my favorites is it comes from a farm, not a pharmacy. I mean, you know it comes from a leaf. The sweetness is from a leaf and then it's a matter of handling that sweetness so that it is consistent and great tasting all the time. This is a long term proposition but one that we are excited we could announce and get started. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.