Battle for Stevia Supremacy Heats Up

PepsiCo just threw down the stevia gauntlet to Coca-Cola Co, announcing the imminent debut of a line of stevia-sweetened drinks. In a press release issued July 31, PepsiCo announced a partenership with Whole Earth Sweetener Company, a subsidary of Merisant, to introduce PureVia™, Whole Earth’s stevia-based sweetener in a new nutritionally enhanced PepsiCo beverage called “SoBe Life.” The drink will first be launched in Latin America, and according to the release, the tabletop sweetener “will launch in the United States this fall before expanding into drink and food products around the world.”

This follows a release in May, announcing Cargill’s introduction of its stevia-based sweetener, Truvia™. The company is marketing a tabletop sweetener and forming a partnership CocaCola to introduce new stevia-sweetened beverages. Waiting in the wings is Corn Products International and their partner Morita Kagaku Kogyo Company Ltd. Gearing up to market still another stevia-based sweetener, Enliten™. Then add the—what sounds like, though I may have misinterpreted all the extraction techniques—more-whole-product versions, like SweetLeaf® Sweetener™ from Wisdom Natural Brands.

To make things even more interesting, the current GRAS status of all these sweeteners is still a bit fuzzy: Sweetleaf appears to be operating under self-affirmed GRAS, Cargill and Merisant have separately petitioned FDA for GRAS status (for “Rebaudioside A purified from Stevia rebaudiana [Bertoni]) earlier this year. Additionally Cargill had commissioned stevia safety studies that were published in May. Corn Products hasn’t made much of their plans public at this point, and I wouldn’t mind being “enlitened” on the status of their product.

It’s all taken on the aspect of a “who’s on first” routine, with confident assurances of imminent FDA approval from everyone but the FDA.

Then there’s the whole application scenario: Apparently patents are involved; the GRAS petitions are for different uses; and, on a more-development-centric topic, I haven’t heard from anyone other than employees of the aforementioned companies that the licorice-y flavor issues are completely solved.

But I’m just an observer here, so I’d like to invite commentary from those in the trenches, suppliers and product developers alike. So, feel free to email me, call (or send samples, so I can weigh in on the flavor debate) and/or use the comment function below. What I do know at this time is that this is a hot topic in the industry, and we’ll be talking a lot more about it in days to come.

—Lynn A. Kuntz