How to label food containing steviol glycosides

Steviol gly­co­sides are a rel­a­tive­ly new ingre­di­ent in the EU. For the EU, it is impor­tant that labelling and mar­ket­ing of a new and rel­a­tive­ly unknown ingre­di­ent should not mis­lead con­sumers. What is the back­ground to this and what are you not allowed to say? In this arti­cle, we take a clos­er look at the pit­falls that are easy to fall into when labelling and mar­ket­ing ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. That’s right – ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides, not stevia.

Background

In every­day speech, the term ste­via is often used a lit­tle slop­py, when it is real­ly ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides that peo­ple refer to. But this is not pos­si­ble in a con­sumer con­text. Stevia is a plant that con­tains the sweet sub­stance ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. By extract­ing ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides you get an extract con­tain­ing ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides but also some resid­ual products.

This plays a big role in the EU. Therefore, expres­sions such as ‘ste­via juice’ or ‘ste­via cream’ are not allowed, since it is not the plant or even the extract which is the active sweet­en­er but only the ste­vi­ol glycosides.

Pioneers

Japan was the first coun­try where ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides were com­mer­cial­ly launched. This hap­pened in 1970. In the US it was approved in 2008 and in the EU it was approved as late as 2011.

Novel food

Steviol gly­co­sides is a so-called ‘nov­el food’. What is this now?

It is an EU reg­u­la­tion that cat­e­go­rizes new foods that have not been con­sumed to a sig­nif­i­cant extent before 1997. These may be ingre­di­ents pro­duced using new tech­nol­o­gy and new pro­duc­tion process­es, or tra­di­tion­al foods con­sumed out­side the EU but which have recent­ly seen demand here as well.

These new ingre­di­ents and foods must achieve three principles:

• Be safe to consume
• Be cor­rect­ly labelled, to not mis­lead consumers
• Not to be nutri­tion­al­ly infe­ri­or to the food it might replace

This arti­cle is about the sec­ond prin­ci­ple – on prop­er labelling. To say that a food con­tains ste­via when in fact it only con­tains ste­via extract from ste­via is not cor­rect. Therefore, it is mis­lead­ing to write ‘Sweetened with ste­via’ or the like when it is in fact sweet­ened with ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. Thus, such expres­sions are not allowed with­in the EU.

Stevia sugar

There may be sweet­en­ers which are mix­tures of sug­ars and ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. To call it ‘ste­via sug­ar’ is not accept­able. This may lead the con­sumer to believe that there is a new type of sug­ar that does not con­tain reg­u­lar sug­ar, which is not the case. A more suit­able but more extend­ed label may be ‘Table sweet­en­er based on ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides and sugars’.

Stevia extract

Even terms like ‘Sweetened with ste­via extract’ can be con­sid­ered mis­lead­ing. This is because it is ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides in the extract that con­tribute to the sweet­ness and not the extract as a whole. However, expres­sions like ‘Made from extracts of ste­via’ may be fine.

Natural origin

If you want to use terms such as ‘nat­ur­al ori­gin’ then you should clar­i­fy your impli­ca­tion. For exam­ple, if you write ‘sweet­en­ers of nat­ur­al ori­gin’, then you should explain what nat­ur­al ori­gin means. A short text about ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides being pro­duced from the ste­via plant which is a plant found in nature may suffice.

Extracted or produced

‘Sweeteners from the ste­via plant’ or ‘Steviol gly­co­sides from the ste­via plant’ may be con­sid­ered mis­lead­ing. The con­sumer may believe that the food con­tains the plant ste­via, which it doesn’t. If you want to prove that ‘sweet­en­ers’ or ‘ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides’ come from ste­via, it must be clear that it is extract­ed or pro­duced from stevia.

For the same rea­son, you should be care­ful about using visu­al expres­sions on your packaging.

Image of stevia

If you have an image of a ste­via plant, it should be stat­ed in the text that ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides are extract­ed or pro­duced from the plant ste­via. Otherwise, the con­sumer may imag­ine that the pack­ag­ing con­tains the ste­via plant.

A taste of stevia

Claiming that the prod­uct tastes ste­via or sim­i­lar can also be con­sid­ered mis­lead­ing. The excep­tion is tea. But then we’re not talk­ing about ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides as sweet­en­ers but ste­via leaves which can be used in tea.

For several hundred years

In South America, ste­via has been used for hun­dreds of years. But it doesn’t mat­ter in the EU. In the EU, nei­ther the plant ste­via nor the addi­tive ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides have been used for hun­dreds of years. Expressions such as ‘A sweet­en­er for cen­turies’ and the like are there­fore misleading.

Health claims

The World Health Organization (WHO) has ‘sol­id evi­dence’ that the risk of being over­weight and obese is reduced if the intake of added sug­ar reduces to less than ten per cent of the total ener­gy intake. Overweight and obe­si­ty are known risk fac­tors for, among oth­er things, insulin resis­tance, dia­betes, high blood pres­sure, high cho­les­terol, triglyc­erides and oth­er blood fats, and car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease. Consequently, sug­ar reduc­tion is good for health. But we must not say that accord­ing to Regulation (EC) No 1924-2006 on nutri­tion and health claims. Not in con­nec­tion with or about a food.

Thus, it is not allowed to say that a food sweet­ened with ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides instead of sug­ar will improve health. You may not even sug­gest such a thing.

Lower blood sugar increase

Exceptions are grant­ed only for cer­tain claims with the exact word­ing stat­ed by the EU. The terms that are approved can be found in the EU’s reg­is­ter of nutri­tion and health claims made on food. For high-inten­si­ty sweet­en­ers, such as ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides, there are only two accept­ed claims:

Consumption of foods/​beverages con­tain­ing instead of sug­ar results in a low­er blood sug­ar increase after con­sump­tion com­pared to foods/​drinks con­tain­ing sugar.

And:

Consumption of foods/​beverages that con­tain instead of sug­ar helps main­tain den­tal mineralization.

It is per­mis­si­ble to change the word­ing if the impli­ca­tions to the con­sumer are exact­ly the same as the approved health claim. However, there is lit­tle room to make big changes. Before chang­ing the word­ing, read a rec­om­men­da­tion pre­pared by the EU Member States.

If you make a health claim, like the two above, you must also add the following:

• Nutrition state­ment.
• A state­ment about the impor­tance of a ver­sa­tile and bal­anced diet and a healthy lifestyle.
• The amount of food and the con­sump­tion pat­tern need­ed to achieve the alleged­ly ben­e­fi­cial effect.
• Where applic­a­ble, a warn­ing to per­sons who should avoid using the product.
• A suit­able warn­ing regard­ing prod­ucts that, if exces­sive con­sump­tion, can pose a health risk.

If you use a health claim allowed by the EU, with a word­ing with exact­ly the same mean­ing as the one approved by the EU and add the five things above, then you are actu­al­ly allowed to also present a more gen­er­al descrip­tion of the health effect of a prod­uct. However, the con­nec­tion between the gen­er­al descrip­tion and the approved state­ment must be clear to consumers.

Case by case

Small details can deter­mine whether a labelling is approved or not. But it is impor­tant to remem­ber that it is always the indi­vid­ual case and the entire­ty that is assessed. The key is that the labelling must in no way be misleading.

Help!

You are read­ing this prob­a­bly because you want to reduce added sug­ar in your company’s prod­ucts to pro­mote the health of con­sumers and use ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides to avoid arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers. Then, of course, you want to tell all this to your con­sumers. But as you under­stand, it is not easy to do so while stay­ing on the nar­row path. Therefore, do not con­sid­er this arti­cle as a guar­an­tee for what you can and can’t do.

We strong­ly rec­om­mend that you con­tact some­one who can advise you. We are hap­py to do that. It is part of our range of ser­vices. Contact us for more information.