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The New York Times - Living SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- MY first encounter
was at a New Age hotel in Berkeley, Calif. I had spent the night on a
magnetic mattress at the Claremont Resort and Spa, and was ready for a
strong cup of coffee. But as I reached for the sugar, I almost got my
hand slapped by Linda Prout, the in-house nutrition therapist.
"This is the answer to your sweetening problems," she said,
taking out a jar filled with an olive-green powder.
She sprinkled some in my coffee, and as I stirred it, the liquid
turned a murky green. I took a sip - it was sweet all right, so
intensely sweet that I reached for my water glass.
The powder was the ground leaf of a plant called stevia, and all
signs are pointing to it as the latest craze to hit the nutritionally
conscious since Power Bars. Stevia sounds too good to be true: it is a
natural substance that is 300 times sweeter than sugar and yet
contains no calories. For years it has kept a low profile on the
shelves of health food stores, sold as a dietary supplement because
the Food and Drug Administration considers it an unapproved food
additive and will not allow it to be sold as a sweetener.
But increasingly, word is getting out, and the intervention at the
Claremont was hardly a one-time wacky occurrence: farther south, at
the Santa Monica farmers' market, pots of stevia are being sold
alongside kitchen herbs like rosemary and basil. A nearby bakery has
begun sweetening its apple pies with stevia. Online, in the electronic
marketplace, people are desperately seeking stevia seeds, which are
being offered for the first time this year by major seed catalogs like
Johnny's and Thompson & Morgan. In the spring and summer, the
plants will be sold at Southern California garden emporiums like Home
Depot. Clearly, this weird little herb from Paraguay is going
mainstream.
Sales rose to $5 million in 2000 from $150,000 in 1997 at Wisdom
Herbs, a Mesa, Ariz., company that is the largest processer of stevia
in the United States. Oscar Rodes, the owner of the Stevita Company in
Arlington, Tex., said the total American market for stevia last year
was $10 million.
Bill Jenks, an organic grower at the farmers' market, sells 10 to
18 stevia plants a day. "They go real fast, usually within the
first hour," Mr. Jenks said. "My customers use it as a
natural sweetener. They take a leaf, crush it to release the oil and
put it in their coffee, tea, or oatmeal - that is, if you don't mind a
little green stuff in there."
For those who do mind, there is the processed stevia, in green or
white powders, or liquid extract. Fresh-leaf stevia tastes the best;
it's mild and refreshing with a slight licorice aftertaste. The plant
costs about $3 a pot. Processed stevia is so concentrated that a
little goes a long way. The olive-green powder smells like hay but
tastes very sweet and has a bitter herbal aftertaste; it's about $6
for two ounces. The clear liquid extract is a bit tangy (about $14 for
2 ounces). The white powder, which is actually dried clear extract,
has a licorice aftertaste (about $8.50 for 10 grams).
At the Santa Monica farmers' market, as crowds milled about and
music played on the loudspeaker, Mr. Jenks offered Lori Innes and
Carole Brown a taste of the fresh leaf. "Umm, good - it's not as
bitter as the powdered form," said Ms. Innes, a longtime user of
stevia in tea. "Without stevia, I'd be a sugar freak. And I love
the idea of cutting this straight from the plant."
The apple, cherry and peach pies from the Apple Mountain Pie
Company in North Hollywood, are sweetened with powdered stevia, said
the baker, Phyllis Rossheim- Pierce, a former movie producer whose
credits include "A House Divided," starring Jennifer Beals.
"I tried making my pies with NutraSweet and Equal, but I
wanted them to be all- natural and chemical-free, so I switched to
stevia six months ago," Ms. Rossheim- Pierce said. "I like
to say it's an old-fashioned pie, the way Grandma used to make."
Well, if Grandma had used soybean shortening in the crust instead of
lard.
"I cook with stevia all the time," Ms. Prout, the
nutritionist, said. "I use it in chocolate pudding, tapioca and
lemonade."
Mr. Jenks suggested mashing five or six leaves in a half cup of
water, putting it in the fridge for two or three days, straining it
and using the sweet water for flavoring.
Popular among diabetics since becoming available in 1994, stevia is
being embraced by dieters wary of sugar substitutes like aspartame and
saccharin. "I have a fair number of patients, diabetic and not,
who are always looking for an alternative sweetener, and I think
legitimately so," said Leslie Bonci, the director of sports
nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. "The
athletes I work with buy stevia too, not even quite knowing what it is
- they've bought everything else on the supplement shelf, so they
figure they might as well buy that too."
The processed form has been used in Japan for 30 years as a
sweetening ingredient, and the raw leaf has been used for centuries in
South America to sweeten a popular tea called yerba mat. Stevia was
introduced to developed countries in 1899. In 1931 scientists
identified stevioside, the molecule that makes the plant sweet, and in
1963 they identified all of the active molecules in the plant.
The F.D.A. says no one has ever provided enough evidence that the
leaf is safe, and prohibits it from being sold or promoted as a
sweetener. That's why it can't be found on supermarket shelves along
with sugar, Equal or NutraSweet. But the Dietary Supplement Act of
1994 allows stevia to be sold as a dietary supplement, where it sits
in health food stores in packages that proclaim, "Don't Sweeten
Your Coffee, Supplement It!"
In the 1990's, two petitions were submitted asking the Food and
Drug Administration to conclude that stevia was generally recognized
as safe. "But we disagreed with those conclusions," Dr.
George Pauli of the agency said. No petitions await approvalnow.
"It costs money to test things, and the companies don't want to
spend the money," Dr. Pauli said.
The plant material between the veins of the stevia leaf contains
the sweet compounds; the bitterness is found in the veins. Each leaf
of Paraguayan stevia contains 9 to 13 percent stevioside, which is
about 300 times sweeter than cane sugar. One-half teaspoon of powdered
white stevia contains less than one calorie and less than a half gram
of carbohydrates.
In a land where a certain kind of cleanliness is next to godliness,
stevia makes the cut. "I first heard about stevia years ago at
the Heartwood Institute up in Humboldt," said Nancy Minges,
director of restorative fitness at the Claremont. "Heartwood is a
massage, nutrition and body-work institute, and they do some pretty
severe cleanses and colonics. But they still allow stevia." Now
Ms. Minges has stopped using sugar.
"I'll put three drops of stevia in a small container of plain
goat's milk yogurt, add a little lemon and vanilla, and mix it up,'
she said. "Or I'll put frozen blueberries in a bowl, pour soy or
rice milk over the top, add a few drops of stevia, and mix that into a
lumpy sorbet."
Yum. |