NPEW 2024 live: Cargill details latest research on stevia safety and health benefits
28 Mar 2024 | Cargill
At Natural Products Expo West (NPEW) we talked to Alyssa Leyva, Cargill’s product line manager for high-intensity sweeteners, about the company’s latest research on its stevia sweetener, finding no significant impact on gut microflora. She also highlighted how another study showed that consuming stevia-sweetened beverages pre-meal reduced feelings of hunger and calorie intake.
This is Yolanda van from Nutrition Insights.
I'm here at Expo West in California with Alyssa Leva, who is the high intensity sweetener product line manager at Cargill.
Thank you for joining us today.
Thanks for having me.
What can you tell us about Cargill's stevia solutions that you're featuring here?
Yeah, so Cargill has a wide portfolio of stevia sweeteners, both leaf-based options, as as stevia created from fermentation.
So our portfolio started initially with our Truvia product line, which is Reb A sweeteners all directly extracted from the leaf.
Then we expanded into our ViaTech portfolio, which is unique combinations of sedio glycosides, specially designed for applications to help our customers with deeper sugar reductions but still delivering great taste.
We really have an industry leading sustainability program for our leaf-based sweeteners, with full traceability.
Then moving on, we have our fermentation-based sweeteners.
So we have our Eversweet product, stevia sweetener, which is Rev D and RevM created from fermentation.
As you might know, RevM is a great tasting stevia glycoside found in the stevia leaf but in really minute quantities.
So here's where we can leverage fermentation to be able to scale up, deliver sizable quantities in a very economical way, but also in a very.
Sustainable way we've actually recently completed our second life cycle analysis with Eversweep, and we're using, using the product environmental footprint impact methodology and we also did a 1044 ISO third party panel review.
And that methodology is really important because it enables us to meet EU standards.
We recently just received a positive EFSA opinion, for the EU, so we're expecting that EverSsuite will be approved in 2024.
That life cycle analysis is also really important for our customers that have made commitments to sustainability metrics, and now we can offer EverSsuite as a great tool to help them achieve those needs.
What does Cargill's latest clinical study conclude on stevia's impacts on the gut microflora?
The key finding was the fact that there was no significant impact on the gut microflora.
We know that the human gut microbiome is incredibly important to human health and wellness.
We also That our diet and food ingredients can have an impact, but there was a knowledge gap on the impacts of stevia on the human gut microflora, so we decided to lean in and do the first very comprehensive study looking at pure stevia glycosides and their impact on the human gut microbiome.
This was a double, a double-blind randomized comparative study that was done comparing a high dose of a stevia sweetened beverage to a sucrose, stevia, a sucrose sweetened beverage.
What we found was actually validating something we knew all along through years of research that stevia is very tolerated, but the second thing that we learned was that there was no significant impact on the human gut microbiome nor on the production of short chain fatty acids which have a beneficial impact on various biological processes.
So this study is actually building on years of research where we have research that has demonstrated the safety of stevia, and now we're leaning into the health benefits of stevia.
And I'm really curious to learn more about what research says on the health those health benefits of stevia.
What can you tell us?
Definitely, as I mentioned before, there's many years of research on the safety.
But we're leaning into those health benefits.
In a recent study, we have looked at appetite, calorie food intake, as as blood glucose in this recent study.
And what we did is we had subjects that consumed beverages 30 minutes before a meal, and those beverages would either be pure water, a stevia seat and beverage, or a beverage with a caloric sweetener.
What we found is that the subjects that had consumed the beverages that were sweetened with stevia were reporting that they had less feelings of hunger prior to the meal, less feelings of hunger compared to water.
What we also found was that there was no blood glucose impact from those that had consumed the stevia sweetened beverage.
And third, what we found is that upon eating the meal, the subjects that had consumed the stevia sweetened beverage consumed 105 calories less than those that had consumed water or any of the other sweetened beverages.
So that's really remarkable findings and again building into this space of health and wellness beyond just the safety of stevia.
That's amazing, really interesting to hear.
Yeah.
And can you tell us a bit about how Cargillstevia Solutions cater to specific dietary needs of people?
Yeah, certainly some that are following specific diets like keto or others that are just looking for a more healthy.
Diet reducing calories and sugars is important to them.
And so for us having this broad portfolio of stevia solutions, we're able to help our customers develop great tasting products to service those consumers that are looking to meet those dietary needs.
Awesome.
And last question that I have is what kind of market trends have you noticed and how do the CPR products or cargo address those trends?
Yes, certainly walking around the show here today we're noticing that there's a lot of customized nutrition, an incredible.
Focus on health delivery products, but all of those are looking for options to include lower in sugar and lower caloric choices.
And so that's where we can really lean in to help consumers or help our customers deliver great tasting products for consumers.
Perfect.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
