Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana) as a common sugar substitute and its application in food matrices: an updated review

Abstract

Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana) has been employee for developing food products as a substitute for sucrose, low caloric, and natural sweetener. Different studies have evaluated the effect of this ingredient on the physicochemical, nutritional and technological properties of products; their application in dairy products affects some sensory characteristics such as taste; in the case of bread, cookies, and cakes modify the properties of the dough, altering attributes of the manufactured product, including color, texture, and flavor; also the use of stevia reduces gelling and affects the optical properties of the final product; and in beverages cases, the total substitution of sugar has led to bitter and unpleasant flavor. This review presents stevia general information and its employees in dairy, bakery, beverages, and jelly products.

Introduction

Sweeteners are substances with a very intense sweet taste used in small amounts to replace the sweetness of a much larger amount of sucrose. Currently, on the market, some caloric sweeteners are available, such as aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame-k, sucralose, neotame, cyclamate, alitame, thaumatin, moneline, and pentadine. These substances are considered by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) as food additives or ingredients, classified as natural and synthetic sweeteners (Wan et al. 2021). There is a great controversy, different studies show that some artificial sweeteners are harmful to health, and that is the point where natural sweeteners add value in terms of health by reducing calories and using ingredients obtained from natural sources and not by chemical synthesis (Ribeiro et al. 2020). However, the number of non-caloric natural sweeteners is small, and, among those currently known, stevia (Stevia rebaudiana) is the sweetener that has raised the greatest scientific interest in recent years.

Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana) is a small perennial shrub that belongs to the Asteraceae family, native to northern Paraguay and areas adjacent to Brazil, discovered in 1887 by the scientist Moisés Santiago Bertoni. The Guaraní Indian tribe has used their leaves since pre-Columbian times to sweeten food. In 1955, the Japanese began to cultivate stevia crops, initially in Paraguay, and around 1970, in southern Japan, thus promoting the development of genetic improvements to the content of stevioside in leaves. One of the main reasons this spread to southern Japan was that artificial sweeteners were heavily regulated and even banned. Today, it is grown in various Asian countries such as Japan, China, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Latin America, mainly in Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Peru. It should be mentioned that China is the largest producer of stevia globally and exports approximately 80% of its production, and Japan is the country with the largest number of factories that process and extract stevioside (Hossain et al. 2017; Ahmad et al. 2020).

Several studies have shown that stevia has health benefits that include antidiabetic, antiobesity, antitumor, antihypertensive, antimicrobial, anticaries, and antioxidant. In addition, they have reported that steviol glycosides from stevia leaves are not teratogenic, carcinogenic, or mutagenic, and they do not cause subacute or acute toxicity (Ahmad et al. 2020). Stevia leaves are becoming an important source of highly potent sweeteners for the growing market for natural foods. Therefore, stevia (Stevia rebaudiana) is used in many countries as a substitute for sugar in foods, beverages, and medicines, and well-known commercial products have been formulated from its derivatives (Putnik et al. 2020).

However, stevioside is bitter or stringent when it is steamed (Hernández et al., 2022); for this reason, it is important to evaluate the proportion of stevia employees for product development. The purpose of this review is to present a complete and updated description of the general characteristics of stevia (Stevia rebaudiana), the effect of its incorporation into various food matrices as a substitute for common sugar, sucrose, and other possible uses of it in the industry as natural emulsifiers or as an effective solubilizing agent.

Characteristics of stevia (Stevia rebaudiana)

Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana), also known as a honey leaf, a caramel leaf, or a sweet leaf (Ahmad et al. 2020), is currently the only species in the Asteraceae family with sweetening properties due to the active compounds present in its leaves, the so-called steviol glycosides; also, stevia (Stevia rebaudiana) present terpenoids, phenolic compounds, carbohydrate, and some proteins (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.

Bioactive compounds identified in stevia (Stevia rebaudiana)

The number of different glycosides that have been identified is over 30: stevioside, steviol, steviolbioside, rebaudioside A, B, C, D, E, F, and dulcoside (Putnik et al. 2020), the most important being stevioside and rebaudioside A. Stevioside is present in leaves in greater quantities, approximately 4–13% of the total weight of the leaf, and is 150–300 times sweeter than sucrose, but has a more bitter and licorice taste than rebaudioside A and is the least soluble in water (Kalicka et al. 2017). The variety of stevia available on the market are mixtures; thus, they contain differences in their content of steviol glycosides, and their sweetness potency is directly proportional to the concentration of each of them (Ribeiro et al. 2020). In addition to sweet glycosides, stevia is also a good source of vitamins such as vitamin C, riboflavin, or folic acid, minerals including calcium, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, iron, and magnesium, essential amino acids, fatty acids, fiber, and other bioactive compounds beneficial for health (Hossain et al. 2017; Ahmad et al. 2020), such as terpenoids (i.e., carvacrol, limonene, α-pinene), flavonoids (i.e., catechin, apigenin, epicatechin, chlorogenic acid, quercetin), polyphenols (i.e., trans-3-O-caffeoylquinic acid, p-coumaric, gallic acid, protocatechuic acid, trans-ferulic acid) chlorophylls, carotenoids, tannins, monosaccharides (i.e., arabinose, mannose, xylose, rhamnose), fatty acid (i.e., linoleic, stearic and palmitic acid) and so on (Fig. 1). These compounds are found in the plant's leaves in variable percentages, depending on the species, the growing conditions, the agronomic techniques implemented, and even the different extraction methods used to obtain the different fractions (essential oils, aqueous or ethanolic extracts), and the solvents used in them (Góngora Salazar et al. 2018; Ahmad et al. 2020), as can be observed in Table 1.

Table 1.

Type of fraction, extraction methodology and chemical composition of stevia as an ingredient in food products

Type of fraction	Extraction methodology	Chemical composition	References
Essential oil	Steam distillation	Silanediol, Cyclopentasiloxane, Cyclohexasiloxane, Estra-1,3,5(10)-trien-17-ones	Siddique et al. (2016)
Essential oil	Hydro-distillation	carvacrol, caryophyllene oxide, spathulenol, α-pinene, ibuprofen, isopinocarveol, caryophylle, pinene, limonene	Muanda et al. (2011)
Fatty acids	Solid–liquid extraction	Palmitic acid, stearic acid, linoleic acid, palmitic acid, 6-octadecenoic acid	Siddique et al. (2016)
Comercial stevia		Steviol; Stevioside, Rebaudioside, Rebaudiosides, Dulcoside, Steviolbioside, Rubusoside, Glucose, Rhamnose, Xylose	Gardana and Simonetti (2018)
Aqueous extracts	Solid–liquid extraction	gallic acid, protocatechuic acid, catechin, chlorogenic acid, epicatechin, p-coumaric acid, rutin, quercetin dihydrate, cinnamic acid, quercetin, apigenin, Caffeic acid, quercetin glucosyl	Muanda et al. (2011)
Aqueous extract	Solid–liquid extraction	Mannose, glucose, arabinose, rhamnose, glucuronic acid, and galacturonic acid	Li et al. (2021)
Aqueos extract	Solid–liquid extraction	Chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, rutin, trans-ferulic acid	Lemus-Mondaca et al. (2018)
Aquous extract	Pressurized hot water extraction	Condensed tannins, Chlorophyll A, Chlorophyll B, Carotenoids, Stevioside, Rebaudioside A	Bursać Kovačević et al. (2018)
Methanol–water-extracts	Solid–liquid extraction	gallic acid, protocatechuic acid, catechin, chlorogenic acid, epicatechin, p-coumaric acid, rutin, quercetin dihydrate, cinnamic acid, quercetin, apigenin	Muanda et al. (2011)
Methanolic extract	Solid–liquid extraction	stevioside, rebaudioside, steviobioside A, B, C, D, E and F, and dulcoside	Ghanta et al. (2007)
Ethanolic extract	Ultrasound-assisted extraction	cis-3-O-caffeoyl quinic acid, trans-3-O-caffeoyl quinic acid, trans-4-O-caffeoyl quinic acid, hexosylpentosyl	Pacifico et al. (2019)
		2-(p-hydroxyphenyl)ethanol, trans-5-O-caffeoyl quinic acid, 5-O-caffeoylshikimic acid, kaempferol dihexoside deoxyhexoside
Ethanolic extract	Solid–liquid extraction	Serine, quinic acid, 3-caffeoylquinic acid (3-CQA), citric acid, Roseoside, Hydroxybenzoic acid, Caffeoylquinic acid, Caffeic acid, Rutin, Quercetin-O-glucoside, Kaempferol-3-O-rutinoside/Luteolin-7-O-rutinoside, Quercitrin, Rebaudioside E, Rebaudioside D, Afzelin, Rebaudioside A, Steviolbioside/Rubusoside, Rebaudioside F, Rebaudioside C, Kaurenoic acid mannosyl glucoside, Stevioside/Rebaudioside B, Steviolbioside/rubusoside	Ciulu et al. (2017)
Aqueous/acetone extract	Maceration	Agatholic acid, 1-heptatriacotanol, duvatrienediol, dihydroxanthin, β-amyrin, lupenone, phytol, palmitic acid, and linoleic acid	Zaidan et al. (2019)

Application of stevia as an ingredient in food products

The most notable function of sucrose in food is to provide its unique sweet flavor, but also contributes to texture and color profiles, affecting the freezing point acting as a bulking agent or preservative (di Monaco et al. 2018). Therefore, different properties must be considered when replacing sucrose, which can cause many defects related to its quality, that is, the Maillard reaction and its presence in the formation of gel in jams and jelly (di Monaco et al. 2018). Reformulation of a product through partial or total sugar substitution is the most studied strategy in most food categories. However, a gradual reduction in sugar content without influencing different aspects of the quality of the final product and its sensory perception is a challenge that food manufacturers must face (Luo et al. 2019). Stevia has been applied in different food products as a natural sweetener (Table 2), that is, incorporated into carbonated beverages (Saniah et al. 2012), chocolates (Vásquez et al. 2017), confectionery (Sukeaw Samakradhamrongthai and Jannu 2021), and others. However, the food matrices in which the most recent research is being carried out are complex because of their partial or total substitution of sucrose by stevia.

Table 2.

Application of stevia as an ingredient in different food products

Food products	Application	Major findings	Referencess
Yogurts	Substitute of sucrose	The addition of sucrose did not affect the consistency of the yogurt	Kalicka et al. (2017)
Carbonated drinks	Substitute of sucrose	The employee of stevia as a sweetener reduces the amount of calories and carbohydrate in carbohydrate beverages	Saniah et al. (2012)
Ice cream	Substitute of sucrose	Stevia did not change the sensorial properties of ice cream	Ozdemir et al. (2015)
Yogurts	Low caloric sweetener	Stevia did not affect the physicochemical and microbiological properties of yogurt	Reyes and Ludeña (2015)
Jams	Substitute of sucrose	Stevia did not change the texture of low-caloric jams	Márquez et al. (2016)
Tea beverage	Develop a low-calorie product	A functional radish tea beverage with overall acceptance, taste, and sweetness scores	Kim et al. (2016)
Sponge cake slices	Substitute of sucrose	Replacing sucrose with low-calorie sugar substitutes based on Stevia glycosides may have variable humectant properties and bulking agents, which may shorten the potential shelf-life of intermediate moisture bakery products	Rodríguez et al. (2016)
Fruit Juice beverage	Natural sweeteners	A development of fruit juice-stevia beverage with great content in bioactive compounds and sweeting properties with minimal color changes	Carbonell-Capella et al. (2017)
Bakery products	Natural Sweetener	Development a bread alternative with functional properties	Jaimes Tarazona et al. (2018)
Berry juices	Natural Sweetener	The addition of stevia increases the antioxidant properties of berry juice	Bender et al. (2018)
Protein beverage	Natural Sweeteners	The development of naturally sweetened protein beverages with reduced calories and desirable sensory properties highlights the importance of label claims for consumers in general, but for a segment of label-conscious consumers	Parker et al. (2018)
Chocolate ice cream	Low-caloric sweetener/natural sweetener	The use of stevia contributes to the manufacture and development of low-calorie chocolate ice cream with functional properties, with a reduction or total absence of sucrose, highlighting the impact of labeling these products on consumer perception	Peres et al. (2018)
Carbonated soft drink	Natural Sweeteners	This study provides a methodology to optimize non-caloric sweetener mixtures for preparing carbonated soft drinks with the lowest possible caloric content while maintaining the tastiness, high sweetness and low bitterness, of full-caloric ones, containing the bulk sweetener tagatose and the high-intensity sweetener stevia	Acevedo et al. (2018)
Coconut jelly	Natural sweeteners	Coconut jelly prepared with steviol glycoside as a sweetener might be an optional food product for healthy people or patients with non-communicable diseases such as diabetes mellitus	Chupeerach et al. (2018)
Pumpkin jams	Low caloric sweetener	Develop a low-calorie peach ready-to-serve beverage that is a promising nutraceutical drink for the management of obesity, diabetes, and its associated complications	Alsuhaibani and Al-Kuraieef (2018)
Jelly candy	Natural sweetener	Develop healthier jelly candies enriched with extracts	Uchiyama et al. (2018)
Carbonated beverage	Low caloric sweetener	Regular soda and low-calorie soda containing different commercial sweeteners appear to influence the surface morphology of primary tooth enamel	Korte et al. (2019)
Ice cream	Natural sweetener	Develop ice cream with adaptogenic functional properties	Bavyko and Bondarchuk (2019)
Jam	Low-caloric sweetener/natural sweetener	The development of low-caloric jam when storage intervals influence physicochemical and sensory characteristics	Sutwal et al. (2019)
Dessert	Natural Sweeteners	Stevia and sucralose were good substitutes for sucrose in formulating lactose-free frozen desserts, but not in vegan versions (with rice and soy protein)	de Medeiros et al. (2019)
Ice cream	Natural Sweeteners	The development of stevia in ice cream helps to produce products with good viscosity characteristics and antioxidant activity	Mayangsari et al. (2019)
Jelly candy	Natural Sweetener	Develop healthier jelly candies enriched with antioxidant extracts	Cedeño-Pinos et al. (2020)
Biscuits	Low caloric sweetener	The replacement of sugar by stevia up to 50% in biscuits is acceptable without appreciable changes in physicochemical and sensory properties	Rana et al. (2020)
Strawberry jam	Substitute of sucrose	Partial substitution of sucrose by fructose or stevia did not impair jam sensory properties and consumers’ acceptance, an alternative for developing a product for diabetics	Jribi et al. (2020)
Sweetened beverage	Natural Sweetener	Develop a beverage with hydration properties	García-Arroyo et al. (2020)
Milk gels	Substitute of sucrose	Fermented milk with stevia sweetener and naturally colored red beetroot may be an alternative to therapeutic dairy products that have positive synergistic interactions providing rich probiotic bacteria to deliver	Ozdemir and Ozcan (2020)
Apricot nectar	Substitute sucrose/low caloric sweetener	Nectars produced with stevia resulted in a significantly reduced caloric value from 86 kcal (nectar with 10% sucrose) to 49 kcal (nectars with stevia), maintaining that they are sweet and licorice aroma	Reale et al. (2020)
Ice cream	Low caloric sweetener	A low-calorie chocolate ice cream sweetened with stevia promotes relevant differences in lactose-free ice cream to traditional ice cream, increasing the duration and dominance of bitter taste, as and pasting, and decreasing consumer acceptance	Medeiros et al. (2020)
Jelly- drink	Low caloric sweetener	Development of antidiabetic product	Jariyah and Sarofa (2021)
Ice cream	Substitute of sucrose	Stevia extract substitutions were highly effective in the technological properties of ice cream in terms of overflow, first dripping time, melting rate, pH, and viscosity	Gençdağ et al. (2021)
Chocolate flauvored milk	Natural Sweeteners	The combination of sugar and stevia as sweeteners resulted in a sweetness synergy and the bitte	Mahato et al. (2021)
Functional beverage	Substitute of sucrose	The sample sweetened with stevia showed higher levels of sweetness, bitterness, and longer duration of the sweet stimulus in the time intensity test	Lima et al. (2021)

Dairy products

To remain competitive on the market by offering clean label products and complying with the new nutritional label requirements, the yogurt industry has redoubled its efforts to develop new technological approaches that allow the reduction of sugar content without affecting properties such as taste, texture, and shelf life, influencing the final acceptance by the consumer (Wan et al. 2021). Despite the healthy components of yogurt, it should be noted that traditional formulations of this product still use sucrose, and the most prominent strategies to reduce its content in yogurt are ultrafiltration, lactose hydrolysis, reduction of sucrose, or substitution by sweeteners, such as stevia in this case (Ribeiro et al. 2020).

Stevia has been a low-calorie sweetener in yogurt and ice cream development, i.e., Reyes and Ludeña (2015) made a low-calorie yogurt using sucralose and stevia as sweeteners. It was observed that the use of stevia in this type of food matrix does not significantly affect the physicochemical and microbiological properties of the product; they verified that the incorporation of steviol glycosides into a probiotic yogurt does not affect the growth of probiotic microorganisms in the culture, also maintaining a functional level after 28 days of storage. The descriptive sensory test established that sucralose significantly improved sweetness compared to the product sweetened with stevia, yogurt added with sucralose being the best treatment.

Additionally, stevia has been employed as a substitute for sucrose in dairy products: Kaur and Goswami (2020) used different proportions of sugar and stevia in their formulations. They found an alternative in the preparation of Rasgulla, a typical Indian dessert prepared with cottage cheese and syrup, especially for those who like to take care of their health. However, Rodriguez Furlán and Campderrós (2017) suggest that sugar can be replaced by a combination of stevia and sucralose in the same proportions to obtain a product with the same level of sensory acceptability without added sugars. In the case of Ozdemir and Ozcan (2020), they achieved a total replacement of sugar by steviol glycosides, in obtaining a dairy product (fermented milk), due to a significant increase in bacterial growth that they attribute to the possible prebiotic effect of stevia and the bioactive compounds present in it. Flavored milk is also a booming dairy product on the market. While most of the available ice cream and cream literature focuses on fat reduction, there is also the challenge of developing low-sugar products.

Furthermore, in 2020, people began to talk about the use of stevia mixtures as a way to overcome the limitations of each stevia separately and at the same time improve the flavor profile of the final product; this was the case of Ribeiro et al. (2020), who compared the formulations of different stevia mixtures, in other words, different concentrations of steviol glycosides with the so-called standard samples sweetened with sucrose and sucralose, where they concluded that the application of this type of stevia mixtures is a potential substitute for sucrose and sucralose in natural yogurt, since their sensory profile was very similar, presenting a dominant sweet flavor and the absence of an undesirable residual flavor.

A general analysis of the findings in this type of food matrix reveals that stevia, which is non-fermentable, does not affect the yogurt fermentation process and shows a perception of taste or a temporal profile dependent on the concentration of steviol glycosides. Those with an aftertaste can be enhanced with synergistic sweetener mixtures or even the use of flavorings, as is the case with fruit yogurts. On the other hand, ice cream and cream with bulking agents or texturizers help to maintain the quality of the final product. Intermediate levels or partial substitution of sucrose provide greater sensory acceptance without bad taste, and no significant effects have been observed on the rheology, texture, or consistency of different dairy products with added sweeteners (Wan et al. 2021).

Nectar and juice type drinks

For a long time, the beverage industry has turned around reducing sugar in response to increased consumer awareness of their health (Mielby et al. 2016), indeed there is a wide range of carbonated beverages on the market that meet this condition, which does not imply that it is a surpassed issue, since today one of its greatest challenges focuses on natural drinks such as nectar and juices. Fruit nectar must be free of foreign matter and flavors; its color must be homogeneous; its smell is generally characteristic of the respective fruit, and the sugar content must be at least 10°Brix. However, this does not apply to products sweetened by total or partial substitute; that sugar, that non-caloric sweeteners are used, this percentage will be lower, and this is reflected in the level of acceptance of the product (Escorcia et al. 2019).

In the case of the employee of stevia as a low caloric sweetener, Zaquinaula (2017) developed a cocona nectar evaluating the effect of the concentration of stevia and sucrose on physicochemical and sensory characteristics. However, no notable changes were obtained on the sensory characteristics of the different treatments; the Brix degrees (6.7°Brix) differed significantly. Regarding the sensory profiles of these product products, various studies have shown that nectars and juices containing stevia as a non-caloric sweetener have a high prevalence of bitterness and unpleasant taste. Furthermore, the current demand for antioxidant-rich beverages is expanding simultaneously as that of making products sweetened with natural ingredients; then, Bender et al. (2018) used stevia as a natural sweetener, taking into account their phenolic compounds; developing high-quality berry juices with antioxidants.

Baked or bakery products

Baked products are one of the most popular foods with a high added sugar content. Theoretically, complete elimination of sucrose from baked products is impossible without negatively affecting some aspects of the quality of the final product (Ahmad et al. 2020) since, in addition to providing sweetness, sucrose has other important functions, such as in the structure of the dough, texture, and volume of the product, hygroscopicity.

Sucrose is hygroscopic and competes with gluten to retain water, so it can delay the formation of gluten webs, resulting in a tender texture and slowing the gelatinization of starch, giving the baked product a more porous structure better expansion in volume. Crystallization is another important property that explicitly affects the texture and appearance of cookies and biscuits due to their low water content. Sucrose tends to crystallize when the water content is low, resulting in a crunchy texture and a cracked surface, a desirable feature in many cookies (Luo et al., 2019). Regarding color and aroma properties, sucrose also plays an important role due to its participation in the Maillard reaction and caramelization, providing a pleasant brown bark color and a unique aroma of this product (Ahmad et al. 2020). Therefore, eliminating or replacing sucrose in sweetened baked goods requires prior studies that explore the minimum level of sugar and/or optimal sugar substitutes that must be added to maintain basic functionality (Luo et al. 2019).

Bread is one of the most consumed bakery products in the world and its technology, despite being one of the oldest, has evolved with the application of new ingredients, equipment, and processes (Vigneshwari and Manonmani 2020).

Stevia, as a substitute for sucrose in bakery products, improves the sensorial and nutritional properties of products. Vigneshwari and Manonmani (2020) mention that the total substitution of sucrose with a mixture of stevia and mannitol reduces the speed of fermentation of the dough and the specific volume of bread and improves the nutritional value of bread by reducing the glycemic index and decreasing the energy value of bread. Recently, Góngora Salazar et al. (2018) prepared oatmeal cookies replacing sucrose with aqueous stevia extract in different percentages, evaluated sensory properties such as appearance, taste, smell, and texture, and demonstrated that cookies prepared by replacing 25 and 50% sucrose with stevia extract were the most accepted by judges, presenting a good smell, ideal texture, sweetness, and crunchiness, unlike cookies with 75 and 100%, which showed the lowest level of acceptance. Furthermore, a greater amount of water activity was detected, and with it the possibility of greater development of molds and yeasts, unlike those partially sweetened with stevia, which would be more stable.

Jellified products

The jams and jellies industry has reached important technical levels, and research continues to improve the final product in all aspects, both organoleptic, health, and technological. They are daily consumption products for a large part of the population, so one of the main objectives is to reduce the sugar content (approximately 60% of its formulation). In addition to providing a sweet taste, sugar contributes to the increase in total soluble solids. The interaction with water and hydrocolloids influences the texture transition (gelation), affecting properties such as color, texture, and stability of jam and jelly (di Monaco et al. 2018).

For example, Sutwal et al. (2019) state that the appearance of undesirable attributes such as the appearance and texture of the low-calorie jam is a constant problem with high-intensity sweeteners if a total sugar substitution is done. Thus, to counteract the texture problems that commonly occur due to pectins and the absence of sucrose in the formulations, Márquez et al. (2016) developed a blackberry jam made with sucralose, stevia, and agar-agar as gelling. Against this, no significant differences were found in the texture of the treatments, and it was established that agar-agar could be used as a gelling agent in low-calorie jams, presenting a firmness like a pectin. Therefore, during its preparation, many authors propose adjustments in the formulation, either through the partial substitution of sucrose or the use of alternative ingredients such as hydrocolloids and acid regulators, which allow the gelled product to be much more similar to the original.

Conclusion

Stevia is an important source of high-potency, low-calorie sweeteners and an appropriate nutritional alternative to replace sucrose in food products. Their main compound found in the plant is steviol glycoside, and it is stable at different pH values, non-fermentative, heat resistant, has high solubility (hot or cold water), and stable in aqueous solution.

Stevia could be employed as a total or partial substitute of sucrose, in combination with additives such as bulking agents, gelling agents, stabilizers, flavorings, and flavorings, improving counteract changes in the textural and sensory properties of the final product. Using appropriate combinations of steviol glycosides allows the control of the appearance of unpleasant flavors that affect the quality of the final product, improving the flavor profile of stevia through some structural changes to the steviol glycoside molecules. The trend towards a “clean label” in which easily identifiable components with non-artificial character are used has made the modern consumer give more importance to foods that can promote their well-being and help reduce the risk of disease. Consequently, stevia could be used as a natural sweetener; also, present antioxidant and technological properties such as emulsifier, texturizing agent, and coloring agent, be a good ingredient for developing functional products.

Authors' contributions

Conceptualization, IPSS, SEQ and LAG-Z; methodology, IPSS, SEQ and LAG-Z; formal analysis, IPSS and LAG-Z; investigation, IPSS resources, SEQ and LAG-Z; writing—original draft preparation, IPSS, SEQ and LAG-Z; writing—review and editing, SEQ and LAG-Z; supervision, LAG-Z; project administration, LAG-Z; funding acquisition, SEQ and LAG-Z. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

Project 368-2019 code 110780864755”.

Declarations

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.