Sweet Time to Invest in Alternative Sweeteners.

Let me tell you why you might want to invest in Stevia:

Recent proposals to tax sugary beverages and use the revenue to help cover the cost of health care reform have gained momentum. While the effect of such taxes on obesity is debatable, it is obvious that such taxes would give beverage producers an incentive to use alternative sweeteners in order to avoid taxation. Given that food consumers have become increasingly wary of artificial sweeteners, which natural health advocates claim are unsafe, producers of natural sweeteners will most likely benefit from a soda tax.

The traditional artificial sweeteners are aspartame, sucralose and saccharin, more commonly known as Equal, Splenda, and Sweet n’ Low, respectively. Under the proposals, beverages sweetened with these products would not be taxed, giving them a strategic advantage. However, food consumers have become increasingly wary of these artificial sweeteners, which natural health advocates claim are unsafe. That means producers of natural sweeteners, such as Stevia, will most likely profit the most from a soda tax.

Use of the natural zero-calorie sweetener made from Stevia had long been banned for food use in the USA, European Union, Singapore and Hong Kong due to health concerns; however, the research study is now generally regarded as flawed, and the FDA approved its use in December of 2008. Since the news of its approval, companies have raced to create Stevia extracts. Blue California, which manufactures highly purified botanical extracts and specialty ingredients, created an almost pure extract of Stevia, celled Good & Sweet and is ready to supply 1200 metric tons a year to food and beverage makers. There are already versions of Stevia-sweetened soda available: Virgil’s Vanilla Diet Cream, Diet Root Beer and Black Cherry Diet Cream “supplements,” as well as Zevia’s Natural Twist, Natural Cola and Natural Orange.

Since the FDA approved use Stevia in US food and beverages, the Stevia market has soared. Less than six months after its approval, sales of Stevia topped $95 million, almost four times the amount it had reached in all of 2008. Mintel predicts the Stevia market could exceed $2 billion by the end of 2011.