Stevia is a member of the daisy family, and Coca Cola teamed with Cargill to bring it onboard as a new sweetener in their family of products.
According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, Coca-Cola has filed 24 patent applications for the product, which has been tentatively named Rebiana. It plans to use the sweetener in some of its beverages. Stevia is only approved in the United States as a dietary supplement, not as a food additive. The extract is claimed to be the world's only all-natural sweetener with zero calories, zero carbohydrates and a zero glycemic index.
Extracts are said to have up to 300 times the sweetness of sugar. As a sweetener, Stevia's taste has a slower onset and longer duration than that of sugar. Lower-calorie sodas are made with artificial sweeteners such as saccharin, aspartame and sucralose. A recent report revealed that the US sweetener market is poised to increase 4% annually, to reach over $1 billion in 2010. A company that could offer a natural alternative to artificial sweeteners may have found a new sweet spot in this growing market.
1. This is not a "new" development for Coca Cola, as they have used Stevia as their sweetner in Diet Coke in Japan and South Korea for close to 30 years now. Both markets have tougher regulations regarding "artificial" sweetners, but stevia is not considered artificial, therefore it does the job without the hassles of getting artificial sweetner approval. The real question we should be asking is whether they have a right to patent a natural product?
Posted at 12:31AM on Jun 10th 2007 by Scott