Green Light For Stevia In The EU

The European food safety authority called the European food safety authority stevia risk free, on April 14, an agency of the European Union, which acts as scientific advisor to risks associated with food, issued its long-awaited assessment on the use of Stevia as a food supplement or Lebenssmittelzusatzstoff. The European Commission had tasked the Agency to make a new scientific judgment about the safety of Stevia, after no final verdict could be like in the past due to the lack of analysis material. This time the EFSA had said specifically the Panel on food additives and nutrient sources added to food (at the), the required materials are available and could therefore a different judgement, as it was the case in the past. As reported on the official website of the Agency, the safety of the consumption of Stevia and Steviol glycosides has been confirmed this time explicitly. At the same time was the recommendation of a safe daily intake by up to spoken to 4 milligrams of Steviol glycosides per kilogram of body weight. Thus following a recommendation of the “Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on food additives” (JECFA), the joint review group for food and food additives of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), that this ADI laid down two years ago. The European food safety authority will disclose the result of their scientific analysis to the European Commission, who is judge several years present requests based on the results, aimed at the approval of Stevia and Steviol glycosides for the food sector.

In the past several of these applications due to the missing analyses were rejected, now an authorisation within six to nine months is expected. With the positive conclusion of the European food safety authority, the long-standing scramble for the use of Stevia as a sweetener will have an end. The leaf extracts of Stevia, one originally in Paraguay -based plant, used for many centuries in their country of origin as a sweetener. Individual components of the leaves can be not only 400 times as sweet as the domestic sugar, they reach this sweetness without calories. In many countries of the world, Japan, used this positive feature above all for decades, drops stevia to date but under the novel food regulation in the European Union and must not therefore even as food have been declared. Movement in the Steviamarkt came after several food giants, had discovered all the Coca-Cola company, the properties of the plant itself. Coca-Cola uses stevia outside the European Union now as a sweetening component of some of its products, and in the first three months of 2010 more than 100 new drinks were introduced in the United States alone of America, based on stevia. At the same time grows the market for other uses of Stevia as a sweetener. In Germany and the rest of the European Union can stevia powder, stevia tabs and numerous liquid stevia, both by end-consumers as also traders, would sell the stevia, are available at.