Sweet dreams

Mankind’s long love affair with sugar shows little sign of abating. But as concerns about rising levels of obesity and diabetes take on greater prominence in our health-obsessed times, the hunt is on for alternatives that allow us to indulge our sweet tooth without piling on the pounds.

For its advocates around the world Stevia rebaudiana offers the best possible solution. Originating from Central and South America, stevia's sweet properties have been exploited by tribes in Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay for generations. During the 20th century it has found a commercial application as a food and drink ingredient in territories such as Japan, Korea and, most recently, the USA. As an alternative to sugar, stevia boasts two key attributes that make it particularly attractive. First, it can be up to 300 times sweeter than sugar and, second, it has zero calorific content, making it particularly attractive for use in 'diet' products. Given these qualities, it is little surprise that some in the food industry view stevia as the Holy Grail of sweeteners.

With 2009 sales of stevia set to top US$100 million in the States alone and predictions that the market could be worth US$2 billion by 2011, it is starting to look as though stevia's time has come. In fact, there is pretty much only one place where the extract's potential is not being fully explored: Europe.

Apart from France, which approved the use of stevia sweeteners with 97 per cent purity rebaudioside A in September of 2009, the rest of the EU is still waiting for the OK from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) before being able to press ahead. The fact that Europe is lagging so far behind in a market with such potential is a major cause of frustration for stevia's supporters.

Professor Jan Geuns is head of the Laboratory of Functional Biology of Leuven University in Belgium and a founding member of EUSTAS, the European Stevia Association. "How can you explain that Europe would be more severe for food safety than countries like America or Australia, New Zealand, and so on?" he says. "That should be unbelievable. You can travel around the world; you can consume stevia products everywhere, except in Europe. In my eyes, that's ridiculous. There are big implications for the European industry, because all others can use stevia as an ingredient and they can make a number of products and sell them.  European companies cannot develop these new recipes, so they will suffer.  They cannot sell these products then in other countries, so that's a big problem for the industry as well."

So why is the EU trailing the rest of the world in its attitude to stevia? "All sweeteners in the European Union, are regulated very tightly under the European Parliament and Council Directive 9435-EC on sweeteners," says Olga Solomon of the European Commission's Health and Consumers Directorate General. "They only can be explicitly authorised on the basis of a safety evaluation and some other criteria which are set in the legislation, like technological-made benefit to the consumer and that the use must not mislead the consumer. In the past, the Commission received data and asked, at the time, the Scientific Committee on Food, which is the predecessor of today's European Food Safety Authority, to assess the safety of stevioside as a sweetener. That happened the first time in 1985 and the opinion was reviewed in 1989. The most recent opinion of the Scientific Committee comes from June 1991. On all these occasions, the Committee raised concerns about the safety of stevio-glucosides. The Committee at the time, in 1991, concluded that the substance is not acceptable as a sweetener on the available data at the time."

That Europe could take such a different attitude to the safety of stevia from just about the rest of the world seems strange, particularly considering its long history of use in South America and latterly Japan. Solomon cites a number of concerns that have dogged the substance since it first came to the EU's attention. "The first comprehensive review was in 1985, when many other sweeteners were looked at," she says. "Then we had a review in 1989.  In both these opinions, there were several questions regarding the purity of the extracts which had been tested, the metabolism of stevioside mutagenicity of metabolites, questionable chronic toxicity, and carcinogenicity studies, and finally fertility studies which were not performed according to good laboratory practice. At the time, the Committee concluded that stevia rebaudiana leaves and the stevioside extracts from them were considered as toxicologically not acceptable." There was a further limited review in 1999 that did not succeed in changing opinions, so stevia remains on the prohibited list.

These continuing concerns over safety are particularly frustrating for Geuns, who believes they are founded on outdated and shoddy research. "The former Scientific Committee on Food of the EU, they published their opinion on stevioglycosides and there were plenty of mistakes," he says. "Those people who had written that opinion on stevioglycosides, they didn't know the difference between male and female animals and so on. That's unbelievable, but that's written in black and white in the papers. All the literature was available so they could judge. They referred to a paper, a nonsense paper, where they claimed that stevia extract was not good for male fertility. In that paper they referred to, it's written that the male animals were never even in contact with stevia extract."

Geuns contends that fears over stevia's impact on male fertility are entirely unfounded and based on a single faulty study, while plenty of more recent research demonstrating the substance's safety. "It has been proven that there is not any effect on fertility," he continues. "The one paper they (the SCF) referred to, it was just, let's say, no more than a joke. It was not a serious scientific paper. It has been published in Nature, of course, but it was in 1967, I believe.  Even one of the co-authors later on he explained that it was not  serious research and they used only a few animals. Since that time, a lot of studies have been done proving that stevia is absolutely safe."

Quite contrary to the EU's reservations of stevia, its supporters contend that it actually has numerous health benefits. Chief among them is the impact increased use of stevia could have on problems like obesity, type 2 diabetes and hypertension. These ailments carry an estimated annual bill of €230 billion in Europe in medical costs alone. While stevia authorisation obviously will not be a magic bullet for these problems, any way in which sugar consumption could be lowered would certainly have positive effects in the long-term.

"It's good for type 2 diabetes," says Geuns. "It lowers blood glucose levels and it increases the sensitivity to insulin. We have also done experiments and shown that it lowers the plaque formation in blood vessels, so you get less arteriosclerosis and less heart infarcts and so on. This has been proven in animal models, of course, but we would like to do some experiments with humans to prove that it's also good to prevent some of these problems with obesity. You can find children with the age of 12 years old that have type 2 diabetes for the moment, because they are eating very bad food. All the processed food with too much sugar in it, too much fat, too much salt."

Perhaps the most contentious charge levelled against the EU's reluctance to authorise stevia is that the decisions behind it aren't entirely science-based. Geuns contends that one of the key reasons that Japan was so quick to accept stevia is that there was no domestic sugar industry in the country to influence regulatory decisions. "In the former Scientific Committee, there were plenty of people that were involved with the sugar industry," he says. "That's the reason. They have written a report just to keep stevia from the market."

It is a powerful accusation and one that Solomon is quick to refute. "EU legislation on food additives and on sweeteners in particular is not there to regulate the market forces," she says. "The role of the Commission is to facilitate, as much as possible, the authorisation of products that are safe and that respond to the other criteria of the EU legislation. Once these criteria are fulfilled, then the Commission would authorise any additive, independent if a big or a small company is behind it. It is no matter whether it comes from an SME or a big company. The Commission does not look if there is a big company or a small company supporting an additive and it does not consider market competition. This is for the market itself.  Commission's task, is to secure that the product which is authorized it is safe and its use complies with the other principles of the legislation."

2010 could be a watershed year for stevia in Europe. A safety assessment is currently underway which should be concluded in March. Based on the new data that has become available since its last assessment, as well as its increasing ubiquity across the world, Jan Geuns is hopeful of a favourable result. "If they do not approve it this time, I will start a stevia revolution," he jokes. "We have had all kinds of revolutions. Why not a sweet stevia revolution?"

Questioned about the likelihood of the substance being approved for use, Olga Solomon is reluctant to make any predictions. "If we have a favourable opinion about the stevio-glucosides, the Commission will start discussions in order to authorise the substance as soon as possible after that time," she says. "Of course, if there will be any safety concerns by EFSA, you can imagine the Commission will not be able to authorise the substance. "

It seems that stevia's future in Europe remains too close to call, though the critical mass of other nations and authorities that have approved its use do give some hope. "In the new applications, there have been new data submitted to address the concerns that were raised in the past," Solomon continues. Even internationally, the safety of steviol glycosides was established by the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on food additives (JECFA) only recently in 2008, on the basis of these new data."

If March 2010 does bring good news for the growing stevia industry, Europe will have to move fast to make up for all the time it has lost. If the ingredient can live up to the grand claims made by its supporters, it has the potential to have a game-changing effect on the market. One things is for sure, if stevia truly allows consumers to indulge their sweet tooth without expanding their waistlines, its future is all but assured.

Toute de suite

When it comers to stevia, France is wasting no time.

In September 2009 the French government took advantage of a window allowing individual member states to approve ingredients for a limited two year period to authorise the use of 97 percent pure rebaudioside A. Though the ruling stopped short of approving all 95 percent purity steviol glycosides as advocates had wished, it is nonetheless a significant step forward for the substance. 2010 will see Coca-Cola France rolling out its first stevia sweetened products in the shape of Fanta Still. The use of stevia allows Coca-Cola to reduce the sugar content of the drink by 30 percent. However, the drinks giant is not altering the packaging of the drink in any way, perhaps wary of consumer reaction to such a recently approved ingredient. The industry will be watching the French experiment very closely for signs how a European approval might be met by the market.