Taking stevia extracts further in NPD
03 Aug 2018 | Sweet Green Fields
At IFT 2018 in Chicago, FoodIngredientsFirst spoke with Mel Jackson from Sweet Green Fields. The company has been working to develop their stevia extracts in NPD. “We have been able to come up with stevia composition that will give a much more sugar like mouthfeel,” he notes. Mel Jackson will be speaking in a webinar on stevia innovation on September 20, 2018. You can register for the webinar here.
This is Rob Wires at the IFT Food Expo in Chicago and I'm here with Mel Jackson, who's the chief science officer at Sweet Green Fields.
Mel, one of the key trends that we've seen within, particularly within beverage formulation is several years ago there was, we were speaking a lot about the 30-40% reduction in sugar content when it came to applying stevia, but now it's really, we can take that to the next level and really go 100%.
Sugar free.
How has the industry been able to achieve this, and what has been some of the innovation that has been going around through players such as yourself?
I think, I think where Sweet Greenfield has really worked hard to improve stevia extracts is to look at individual stevia or glycosides, either in the leaf or in the actual extract that's going to go into an application.
So we've been studying stevia or glycosides specifically, individually, to understand how they behave in the mouth, how they interact with bitterness receptors, etc.
And so what we've been able to do is to select those and then combine them and come up with stevia extract compositions that are going to give you.
A final overall effect in the mouth that's much more sugar-like.
And not only do you get that, you're because of that, you're able to remove more sugar out of the application and in some cases get to a diet solution.
What have been some of the extract compositions that you've been working towards then?
Which type of formulations have been particularly efficacious?
I think what we have found is there are a few individual stevie oil glycosides that we know an awful lot about now, and we know that when we combine them in certain ratios, we're going to get a certain effect.
So in beverages, for example, you're going to find that you can get to either at or very close to a diet solution with minimum off notes.
You're really looking at something that the consumer would consider to be a full sugar beverage, even though it's 80, 90, 100% sugar reduced.
OK.
Where do you see some of the rising applications?
Beverages is the obvious one, but elsewhere, yes, there are.
Stevie is slowly but surely starting to become more accepted than the willingness of customers to kind of Put them into different applications is growing exponentially.
So for us, what we have seen is beverage has always been the big one.
Now we're looking at dairy, so yogurts, chocolate milk, those kinds of of bottled beverages, etc.
They're all really suit themselves to a stevia extract that doesn't have that bitterness and lingering.
And you really do need a clean stevia solution to make that work in dairy.
OK, so optimistic going forward, I guess.
Very optimistic going forward, yeah, I think as we get better at making stevia extracts taste much more like sugar, then the more applications and the more sugar we should be able to replace and everybody feel healthier for that.
So plenty of scope for innovation too.
Very much so, very much so.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
