Truvia a sweet option for diet soda
The no-calorie sweetener Truvia hits the markets today, and Coca-cola is already planning to produce diet sodas with it in the future. Alisa Roth has more on how other beverage makers may or may not use the sugar alternative.
Truvia is a sweetener produced from the stevia plant. (Daniel Caselli/AFP/Getty Images)
TEXT OF STORY
Scott Jagow: Thankfully, I don't have any pressing -- I mean, depressing -- economic news to report this morning. So, I'm starting with this: A new sweetener hits the market today. It's called Truvia. It's all natural, made from an herb called Stevia. Stevia is apparently 300 times sweeter than sugar, if you can imagine that. So now in addition to the yellow, blue and pink packets, you can choose the green one. Alisa Roth has more on Truvia.
Alisa Roth: The sweetener comes from the leaves of a plant that grows in Latin America. You can already buy it as a supplement-in health food stores. But this is the first time it'll be sold like any other sugar substitute.
Coca-cola and Cargill are teaming up to sell the stuff. And Coke says it'll eventually start putting the stuff in diet sodas.
John Sicher is editor and publisher of the trade publication Beverage Digest. He says the diet soda business is big, but it's declining. Stevia might be a way to gain some new followers:
John Sicher: With Americans having a growing interest in natural products, combining that with an interest in low-calorie products, beverage executives think that a natural, no-calorie sweetener would be something which would enable them to add products to their portfolio.
He says he doesn't expect beverage makers to change the formula for their regular sodas.
In New York, I'm Alisa Roth for Marketplace.
Comments
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From middleport, NY, 11/08/2009
What store? Name of store. I cant find it anywhere.
From San Francisco, CA, 05/21/2009
Sure it may taste good, but it's a terrible name for a sweetener that they're touting as natural.
How not to name a sweetener:
http://onthebutton.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/truvia_purevia/
From tulsa, OK, 12/28/2008
Some people would complain if they were hung with a new rope. If you don't like the way things are, either change them or MOVE. I don't know anywhere else on earth where you can grinch as much as you can here in the good ole USA. I, for one, will be trying this to see if I like it and if it works for me, I shall be a good customer. I use sucralose now and would like to have something more natural. I won't be complaining about the FDA and assigning blame because it's better than melamine as got into things in China.
From palo alto, DE, 12/23/2008
Truvia is the most perfect consumer rip-off in history. That the FDA approved truvia and not stevia is solely to allow Cargill to sell the only sweetener allowed in the bzillions of sweetened products (baked goods, kethup, spaghetti sauce, frozen foods, ice cream, etc). I tried to sell ketchup in the 70's made with honey and was prevented by them. They have perverted the standards of identity 180 degrees from the original regulatory protection of consumers to become a monopolistic profit guarantee: originally the standard of identity regulations meant that at least n% meat had to be in canned beef stew, n% fruit juice in fruit juice, etc. In the 70's they sued me for making ketchup with honey sucessfully preventing me from calling it honey, although the original standard of identity regulations were to guarantee that you could find more tomatoes than sugar in your ketchup. Now that they have spent countless millions to prevent stevia from being called a sweetener, then they slap their brand name on it and stevia can be used in anything, as long as it is CARGILL's Truvia! Buying stevia at the health food store will not help enough - no one can make candy with it, etc. You have to pressure congress to stop this rip-off of consumers and grant of monopolistic rights to Cargill. Stevia, not some suspicious 'version' of it lobbied by a corporation, must recieve the status of 'approved sweetener' from the lobbiests-over-consumers FDA!
From New Delhi, NY, 07/29/2008
Truvia is good begining in USA
We in India have Stevia since 2004
Brand is SteviaLife
www.steviabiotech.com
From Colorado Springs, CO, 07/23/2008
Another FDA trick:
The FDA also allows the makers of "Splenda" to use the tag line "Made from sugar" to convince the average American that it's just as safe as sugar. Anyone that took high school chemistry knows how wrong that is. The reality is that Splenda (sucralose) is manufactured by replacing atoms in the sugar molecule with chlorine. There are hundreds of examples where you can take a perfectly safe substance and turn it into poison by simply replacing a single atom. The most simple being "water". One atom difference and you have pure hydrogen peroxide. The stuff that you gargle with is only a 3% solution. Gargle with "pure" hydrogen peroxide and you'll need an ambulance ride to the ER. Or better yet, simply apply electricity to water and you get ROCKET FUEL. How's that for a marketing slogan? "Drink liquid hydrogen!! It's made from water!!".
From Colorado Springs, CO, 07/23/2008
Blocking stevia all these years while their big business buddies could find a way to better profit from it. Have they no shame?!?! Of course they don't!!
For decades the FDA has blocked the approval of the 100% natural sweetener called "stevia". While sold as a "supplement" it couldn't be sold as a "sweetener" and couldn't be used to sweeten foods and beverages even though it's been used safely for centuries. But the FDA proudly stands by their decision to allow millions of Americans to buy and consume saccharin, a known carcinogen. Who do they think they are fooling? Actually, they know they are fooling millions of in-the-dark uneducated Americans drowning in a pool of misinformation. That's the way they like to keep us. Good thing that some of us can think for ourselves.
From Fort Collins, CO, 07/16/2008
I have been using the stevia-based sweetener OnlySweet for months. I buy it from my local grocery store, and there have been other alternatives on the grocery shelves for as long. I wonder why Truvia got this free advertisement from Marketplace when the other stevia sweeteners did not?
From Rochester, NY, 07/10/2008
There's already a stevia-flavored soda on the market, it's called Zevia. Check out their website at: www.zevia.com
From delaware, OH, 07/09/2008
I have been using stevia for well over 10 years when I first purchased it at the local food coop. Yes it is indeed very sweet and my first recipe was for a key lime pie. Yum, Yum. I guess I knew deep down the big shots would get their paws in this.
Elizabeth Shipley
http://www.maketempeh.org
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