Cargill Inc. and the Dutch ingredients giant Royal DSM this week began churning out a new sugar substitute that mimics stevia, but without using any of the plant.
The Minnetonka-based agribusiness has been working on getting the product, called EverSweet, to market for several years. Earlier this year, it formed a joint venture with Royal DSM, which was working on a similar product, in hopes of expediting the process.
The joint venture — called Avansya — started making the stevia-like sweetener at commercial scale at Cargill's Blair, Neb., plant this week.
Stevia is a plant grown in South America that produces a noncaloric sweetener that is 250 times sweeter than sugar. EverSweet was inspired by stevia, in that it is made from two key molecules — Reb M and Reb D — that give stevia its sweetness. But rather than being grown in nature, EverSweet was made in a lab through fermentation.
A decade ago, Cargill partnered with the University of Munich and Swiss biotech company Evolva to map the stevia leaf's molecular biology. The team found that when Reb M and Reb D were combined, it produced the same sweetness but without the Reb A molecule that can give pure stevia products a bitter aftertaste.
But Reb M and Reb D are found in less than 1% of each stevia leaf and Cargill said it could never grow enough to make leaf extraction feasible without degrading the land.
For many, the appeal of a stevia sweetener is that it is natural. Cargill's bestselling sugar alternative, Truvia, is made from stevia and a testament to the popularity of nature-derived products.
The EverSweet process has raised questions among some consumers concerned about genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. The process adds a GMO yeast to a fermentation tank where it helps convert simple sugars into Reb M and Reb D. The labeling of EverSweet as genetically modified is likely to vary by country.
