Stevia rebaudiana leaf extract can be used in ice cream and soft drinks, and stevioside is used to enhance the sweetness of sucrose chloride, aspartame and cyclamate. Stevioside and its salts can be used to ripen fruits and vegetables. Stevioside is added to food, beverage or medicine as an aromatic flavor enhancer. Used for salt free storage of food. Stevia is used in the manufacture of hard candy together with lactose, maltose syrup, fructose, sorbitol, maltitol and lactulose. Stevioside can be used to produce chewing gum and bubble gum, as well as candy with various flavors, such as soft candy with the flavor of papaya, pineapple, guava, apple, orange, grape or strawberry. Stevia can also be mixed with sorbitol, glycine and alanine to produce cake powder. Stevioside is particularly suitable for this purpose because it is heat stable.
Various soft drinks, such as low-energy cola drinks, can also be sweetened with stevioside and high fructose syrup. Stevioside can also be used in solid drinks, health drinks, sweet wine and coffee.
As a plant calorie free sugar substitute, stevia rebaudiana leaf extract is a perfect and unprecedented opportunity for consumers who are looking for a natural calorie free sweetener substitute for their healthy lifestyle balance and weight management plan.
Stevioside, as a new natural sweetener, has been favored by people and popularized. However, because stevioside is a new sweetener, people have not fully mastered its use method, and it can not be easily used.
The use of stevioside has been controversial all over the world. Singapore, Hong Kong and Macao have successively stopped selling foods suspected to contain stevioside, an additive that may cause cancer, which has intensified this dispute again. A relevant person from the legal system and supervision department of the Ministry of Health said that the Ministry of health attaches great importance to the safety of stevioside. At the same time, it is pointed out that the Joint Expert Committee on food additives of the World Health Organization and the food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations conducted a safety evaluation of stevioside in 1998 and did not draw an evaluation conclusion that stevioside is harmful to human health.
Stevioside is mainly used as a sweetener in Asian countries and regions such as China, Japan, South Korea and Brazil. Before Singapore, Hong Kong and Macao banned the use of stevioside, the United States, the European Union and other countries have always excluded stevioside from food additives. In the past 10 years, the FDA has refused to approve the application of stevioside as a food additive three times, believing that its safety has not been fully confirmed.
