Stevia Powder Info

March 17th, 2011

Plant stevia is a perennial shrub that grows to 1 m tall and has leaves 2-3 cm long and it is a member of the Aster family, that is indigenous to the northern regions of South America. Stevia plants are still found growing wild in the highlands of the Amambay and Iguacu districts (a border area between Brazil and Paraguay). In comparision to S.rebaudiana no other stevia plants have exhibited the same intensity of sweetness although it is estimated that as many as 200 species of stevia are arose in South The States . To earn huge profits it is grown at a huge scale in many parts of Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Central The States, Israel, Thailand, and China .

As a sweetener natives of brazil and paraguay from amount of years are consuming stevia leaf extract . To sweeten other teas and foods they have likewise used stevia and as a medicinally as a cardiotonic, for obesity, hypertension, and heartburn, and to help lower uric acid levels have also used it .

As well as being a sweetener, stevia sugar is considered (in Brazilian herbal medicine) to be hypoglycemic, hypotensive, diuretic, cardiotonic, and tonic. The leaf is used for diabetes, obesity, cavities, high blood pressure, fatigue, depression, sweet addictions, and infections it is employed in [traditional conventional] medical systems in Paraguay for the same purposes as in Brazil.

The natives of South the United States were utilizing the plant to sweeten herbal tea when this was first learned to europeans in the sixteenth century century since then throughout Europe and Asia stevia powder has been used widely . In the United States, herbalists use the leaf for diabetes, hypertension, infections, and as a sweetening agent. Stevia has been approved as a food additive and sugar substitue in japan and brazil .

Around nineteenth century western interest in Stevia sweetener started to produce, when the fact about a plant with leaves so sweet that one leaf would sweeten a whole gourd packed with bitter yerba mate tea became aware to researchers in brazil . In the 1900s some of the earliest articles on stevia was published by paraguayan botanist Moises S.Bertoni, in 1899 he started to study on it .

Over 100 phytochemicals have been found in stevia leaf since as it is rich in terpenes and flavonoids. When eight novel plant chemical substances called glycosides were discovered and named ,as in 1931 the components answerable for stevia’s sweetness were attested . One called stevioside of these eight glycosides is known to be sweetest – approximataletly 300 times sweeter than sugar as been aproved by test . The most dominant glycoside found in the leaf is stevioside, that is for the stevia extract comprising around just 6-18% . steviolbioside, rebausiosides A-E, and dulcoside A are the ingredients which are inclded in other sweet.