Stevia: Naturally Sweet Recipes

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Stevia, nature’s sweet secret, unfurls new leaves in pairs at the stem tip.

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Stevia Recipes:

Discover for yourself how sweet it is. The taste of stevia is not identical to that of sugar, but it is pleasing with a wide variety of foods. Here are some nutritious and satisfying treats that owe their sweet taste to stevia.

• Monster Cookie Balls
• Wonder Pumpkin Pie with Stevia
• Green Smoothie
• Oatmeal Apple Muffins
• Carob Brownies 

From the highlands of Paraguay comes a sweet little secret: Stevia rebaudiana, whose leaves are the sweetest natural product known. Far sweeter than sugar, stevia has virtually no calories, and unlike sugar, it doesn’t raise blood-sugar levels or promote tooth decay. In the United States, after bitter controversy in recent years, the plant is now becoming more ­widely available, but people in other parts of the world have long appreciated its extraordinary sweetness.

S. rebaudiana, a member of the aster family (Compositae), is a small perennial shrub native to Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina. Indians of the Guarani tribe appear to have used the leaves as a sweetener since pre-Columbian times, but it was not until 1887 that a South American natural scientist “discovered” it.

Originally placed in the genus Eupatorium, the plant was reassigned to Stevia in 1905. More than 80 species of stevia are known to grow wild in North America and another 200 in South America, but of these, only S. rebaudiana and another species, now extinct, have possessed the intense natural sweetness.

The sweet secret of stevia lies in a white crystalline compound called stevioside, a glycoside composed of glucose, sophorose, and steviol. Stevia leaves are 10 to 15 times as sweet as table sugar, but stevioside extracts may range from 100 to 300 times as sweet as sugar.

Why is stevia such a secret? Is it safe? How can we use it when cooking and preparing food?

A Brief History

In Paraguay, Indians have long used stevia to sweeten bitter beverages, particularly maté. By the turn of the ­century, this “sweet herb” or “honeyleaf” was being widely used by herbalists throughout Paraguay as a tea sweetener.

Research to unravel the secret of stevia began in 1931 when two French chemists isolated a constituent they named stevioside. They found it to be 300 times as sweet as sugar and apparently nontoxic to laboratory animals.

In 1941, because of the scarcity of sugar and other sweeteners in England due to the German submarine blockade, the British sought a substitute sweetener that could be cultivated in the British Isles. Research commissioned by the director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew showed that stevia had potential for sweetening beer and other beverages, as well as food for diabetics. Furthermore, the dried leaves could be kept indefi­nitely and added whole or powdered to tea or coffee, and powdered leaves could be used for sweetening stewed fruit and other dishes.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print