How to purchase stevia extract

Stevia extract is extract­ed from the ste­via plant that is cul­ti­vat­ed in many parts of the world, and there are many dif­fer­ent play­ers in the area. Finding the right ste­via extract is not easy – you have many choic­es to make. In addi­tion, the com­po­si­tion of ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides varies wide­ly between dif­fer­ent ste­via extracts, but also between two extracts that have an equal pro­por­tion of a spec­i­fied ste­vi­ol gly­co­side. And who should you buy from? We make an effort to take a clos­er look at all of this in this article.

A large family

Let’s start with the plant ste­via. There are 240 species of ste­via, but only one con­tains the sweet sub­stances that are extract­ed. It’s called Stevia rebau­di­ana and orig­i­nates from the trop­i­cal and sub­trop­i­cal parts of South America. It is par­tic­u­lar­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Paraguay.

It’s impor­tant to grasp that you are not buy­ing ste­via but the extract that can be obtained from ste­via. Stevia leaves are only allowed in tea, herbal teas and fruit fusions. However, the sweet sub­stances in ste­via leaves - ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides - can be extract­ed and used in a wide range of foods. Stevia extract is a white pow­der con­sist­ing almost exclu­sive­ly of the 11 ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides approved in the EU.

Choosing continent and country

South America has an advan­ta­geous cli­mate for large-scale ste­via pro­duc­tion. But there are oth­er options as well. Stevia is now grown in Southeast Asia, Africa and the USA. Yes, even in Europe there are ste­via cul­ti­va­tion. But the coun­try most often asso­ci­at­ed with ste­via is China. The rea­son for this is that the giant in the east accounts for 80 per cent of the world’s ste­via production.

Different concentrations

A com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent area, but just as impor­tant is to find out what kind of ste­via extracts to choose. Eleven dif­fer­ent ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides are found in today’s ste­via extract and some of them (for exam­ple, Reb A, Reb M and Reb D) make up the major­i­ty of the con­tent (from about 50 to 98 per cent concentration).

The fact is that ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides with a hun­dred per cent puri­ty are not avail­able on the com­mer­cial mar­ket. The var­i­ous ste­via extracts con­sist of a mix­ture of ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides, where only one of them is present in a giv­en pro­por­tion. For exam­ple, our ste­via extracts con­tain 50, 60, 80, 95, 97 or 98 per cent Reb A, Reb M, Reb C or Reb D while the rest is oth­er ste­vi­ol glycosides.

If a spec­i­fied pro­por­tion of a ste­via extract is a spe­cif­ic ste­vi­ol gly­co­side, then what makes the remain­ing con­tent? Mostly ste­vio­side, as it is the most com­mon ste­vi­ol gly­co­side in ste­via leaves, but also oth­er ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. There are also some min­er­als and oth­er left­overs from the plant.

What con­cen­tra­tion should you choose? There is no obvi­ous answer to that ques­tion. It depends on what type of food and what flavour pro­file you want to achieve. It has been found that when the con­cen­tra­tion is low­er and sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides are allowed to meet, syn­er­gy effects arise which improve the taste. In the arti­cle A coun­ter­in­tu­itive fact about ste­via extract, you can read about an inter­est­ing exper­i­ment regard­ing yoghurt and stevia.

Which one should you choose?

Extracts con­tain­ing main­ly Reb A are among the most wide­ly used. It is also rel­a­tive­ly cheap. Recently, new alter­na­tives have emerged such as Reb D and Reb M. These are avail­able in sig­nif­i­cant­ly small­er quan­ti­ties in ste­via leaves com­pared to Reb A. They are there­fore more expen­sive than Reb A. But they are also more sug­ar-like and lack the liquorice-like after­taste found in Reb A, thus, no oth­er ingre­di­ents are need­ed to mask the off-taste.

If you ignore the high­er price of Reb D and Reb M it sounds like a sim­ple choice, right? Why choose Reb A if there are oth­er ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides that taste bet­ter and are more rem­i­nis­cent of sugar?

It’s not that sim­ple. The choice of ste­vi­ol gly­co­side depends on many fac­tors. For exam­ple, what foods you should use it in, price seg­ment, oth­er pos­si­ble ingre­di­ents and taste expe­ri­ence require­ments. In gen­er­al, one could argue that Reb M fits well in prod­ucts with a sim­ple taste pro­file where you want big and tangy sweet­ness with­out any side-tastes, for exam­ple in sweets.

In foods with a more com­plex taste pro­file, such as choco­late prod­ucts, the slight­ly bit­ter Reb A can team up with cocoa that is also bit­ter. In the arti­cle How to choose between Reb A and Reb M, you can read more about choos­ing ste­vi­ol glycosides.

Not indisputable

Which main ste­vi­ol gly­co­side, mix­ture and con­cen­tra­tion that you should choose is not by far indisputable.

To facil­i­tate this deci­sion-mak­ing process, you need a work­ing method where you sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly inves­ti­gate which ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides are suit­able for your par­tic­u­lar food. This means that you will prob­a­bly have to do exten­sive tests to meet your spe­cif­ic require­ments for sweet­ness, taste and mouth­feel.

In short – you need to find out what type of ste­via extract is right for your needs. Should it be one with 50 per cent Reb A or one with 98 per cent Reb M, or some­thing else? And how does the extract work with oth­er ingre­di­ents in the food?

Varying Content

There is great vari­a­tion between ste­via extracts with the same con­cen­tra­tion of the same ste­vi­ol gly­co­side. For exam­ple, a ste­via extract with 60 per cent Reb A from one sup­pli­er can have a dis­tinct­ly bit­ter taste and clear liquorice-like after­taste, while from anoth­er sup­pli­er it has a much more pleas­ant and more sug­ary sweetness.

Obviously, there is no dif­fer­ence between Reb A from one sup­pli­er to anoth­er. It is the same sweet sub­stance regard­less of where the plant is grown or how it has been extract­ed. It is the remain­ing part – the 40 per cent that is not Reb A – that sep­a­rate dif­fer­ent ste­via extract from each other.

For each frac­tion Reb A that is extract­ed, you get about twice the frac­tion of ste­vio­side, which is more bit­ter and has a pro­nounced taste of liquorice that sets it apart from Reb A. You also get a frac­tion con­tain­ing residues – oth­er ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides and some tan­nins, flavonoids, min­er­als and oth­er sub­stances from the leaves.

The 40 per cent that is not Reb A is thus a mix­ture of the two frac­tions with ste­vio­side and the residues. It is part­ly the pro­por­tions between these and part­ly the com­po­si­tion of the residues that make the dif­fer­ence between two extracts with 60 per cent Reb A.

Buying stevia extract

If you have decent knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence, the right net­work and are able to play it cool, you can source ste­via extract direct­ly from man­u­fac­tur­ers. But for them want­i­ng to do busi­ness with you, you may have to buy large quan­ti­ties. And if you have such great needs, the oppo­site prob­lem could arise; the man­u­fac­tur­er may not be able to (or don’t want to) sus­tain­ably deliv­er the vol­umes you need. These are exam­ples of prob­lems you have to deal with if you are going to buy direct­ly from manufacturers.

Another prob­lem is qual­i­ty. How should you ensure that the ste­via extract you get is con­sis­tent in qual­i­ty over time? And how should you arrange and mon­i­tor food safe­ty from man­u­fac­tur­ing to fin­ished prod­uct? On top of this, you have to man­age the han­dling of freight, cus­toms and the like.

It can be tempt­ing to skip the mid­dle­men – exporters, importers and dis­trib­u­tors – to avoid pay­ing their orders. And, by all means, if your com­pa­ny has the resources to solve any prob­lem that may arise, you may go ahead. But don’t mis­take the mid­dle­men for greedy types who just cut between. They add great val­ue by solv­ing prob­lems for you.

For exam­ple, an importer or dis­trib­u­tor can ensure equal access to ste­via extracts of equal qual­i­ty, by pur­chase ste­via extracts from many dif­fer­ent sources. They can also ensure that the entire chain from farm to prod­uct meets all reg­u­la­to­ry requirements.

A Helping Hand

If you would like tips on dis­trib­u­tors sell­ing our ste­via extracts, please con­tact us. We have dis­trib­u­tors in most EU countries.