At the Whole Foods Market in Silver Spring, Md., the self-serve coffee counter offers four types of milk and nearly every imaginable alternative to granulated sugar. There's unrefined sugar, evaporated cane juice, agave nectar — and a no-calorie sugar substitute called Truvia.
The green packets are tucked behind the cash register; if you want it, you have to ask. That's because they have a way of disappearing. "People take a lot more than they need," says Liz Burkhart, a Whole Foods spokeswoman.
Truvia's maker, agricultural giant Cargill Inc., of Minneapolis, is aware that consumers often stock up on Truvia packets at coffee bars and in restaurants. Zanna McFerson, vice president and business director for Cargill Health and Nutrition, says Cargill is developing a dispenser that would limit the number of packets a consumer can take at once.
One reason Truvia is so appealing is its position as a "natural" alternative to aspartame, saccharin and other chemically derived sugar substitutes. Fans say they think Truvia's taste and texture are closer to sugar than those of older entries. It's true that Truvia pours out of the packet in convincing crystal-like granules, not in a powder. And when sprinkled on top of foods such as cereal, Truvia crunches.
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Some detractors, though, complain of a Truvia aftertaste, especially when it is used in coffee. And many customers blanch at the price. A 40-count box of Truvia packets retails for $4.29 at the Giant Foods supermarket in Silver Spring, compared with $2.99 for a 50-count box of Splenda.
Few consumer products have been a greater marketing challenge than no-calorie sweeteners. Companies have devoted teams of scientists to trying to develop better-tasting sugar-substitutes. "I don't think anyone's cracked the code," says Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of brand-consulting firm Landor Associates. Consumers resist, whether complaining about taste or worrying about safety.
Taste "used to be the only thing [marketers] had to worry about," Mr. Adamson says. "Does it taste good? Is there an aftertaste?" Now, he says, "the new challenge is to alleviate the lingering concerns . . . . Did they really test it on enough rats over a long enough period of time?"
Cargill makes Truvia from the stevia plant, a member of the chrysanthemum family and native to parts of South America. Leaves are harvested, dried and steeped in water to release the sweeteners found in Truvia's key ingredient, rebiana. Truvia also contains erythritol, a calorie-free sugar alcohol that diffuses the sweet taste across the palate and helps make the crystals.
Cargill, working with Coca-Cola Co., won Food and Drug Administration approval for Truvia in 2008. Since then, sales have overtaken long-established rivals including Sweet'N Low (pink packets with the sweetening agent saccharin) and Equal (light-blue packets with aspartame). Truvia is now the No. 2 branded sugar substitute, behind only Splenda (yellow packets with sucralose), according to retail-sales data for the year that ended Oct. 30, 2011 from SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago market-research firm. (Its numbers don't reflect sales at Wal-Mart, nor at warehouse clubs, food-service companies and other suppliers to restaurants, an important channel for sugar substitutes.)
[More from WSJ.com: New Ways Calories Can Add Up to Weight Gain]
Truvia's premium price may have something to do with why coffee shops find it hard to keep the product in stock. Mary Finnegan, a Truvia customer in Edina, Minn., says, "I might throw a couple in my purse" whenever it's available.
Cargill's Ms. McFerson says Truvia has a "clean, sweet taste." And it costs more because it's more expensive to produce a plant-derived product. "We'll always be more expensive because rather than making something in one place, you're growing plants and working with farmers all through the supply chain," she says.
Ruby Washington, a government program manager for the District of Columbia, first heard about Truvia at a church potluck and bought it for her husband, Henry, who had learned that he is a near-diabetic. Although he cringed at the taste of other sugar substitutes, Ms. Washington told him this one would be different. She says, "I told him it must be OK because they say it's natural."
"Natural," a largely unregulated word, casts a powerful spell over marketers, too. Since Truvia hit the market in 2008, it has shown up in more than 30 products, from Coca-Cola's Glacéau Vitamin Water Zero to Kraft Foods' Crystal Light Pure. So far, stevia-based sweeteners have proved most compatible with citrus and other light-flavored drinks. PepsiCo's Trop50, a reduced-calorie juice drink brand, is sweetened with PureVia, a stevia-based sweetener from Merisant, the Chicago marketer of Equal.
[Also see: Ways to Beat Your Food Cravings]
Merisant prices PureVia below Truvia. Paul Block, Merisant chief executive, says the PureVia customer wants a natural sweetener but doesn't want to pay "crazy" Truvia prices.
"We're not going after Truvia customers," Mr. Block says. "We're going after sugar users who can't afford Truvia." Stevia has helped energize the sugar substitute business. "It's on fire," he adds. "When [consumers] see things that are 'natural' and 'pure,' that is a very fertile area for growth.
Truvia says there are hundreds of new Truvia-sweetened products in the works. Tillamook, a dairy-farm cooperative based in Tillamook, Ore., is launching a Truvia-sweetened "light" yogurt in January. Marketing materials trumpet that it is "naturally sweetened."
"That's huge," says Jay Allison, vice president of sales and marketing at Tillamook. "We know we're not a Yoplait or a Dannon, but we wanted to have a great light yogurt. So we said let's not use anything artificial."
Ever since the FDA banned cyclamates in the 1960s due to links to bladder cancer in laboratory animals, sugar substitutes have faced skepticism. In 1977, foods containing saccharin were required to carry a warning label based on results of laboratory studies involving high doses of the artificial sweetener. In 2000, Congress enacted legislation eliminating the label warning.
The door remained open to rivals, though, and a new one hit the market in 2000, when Johnson & Johnson's McNeil Nutritionals unit came in with Splenda. Splenda's sweetening ingredient is sucralose, a chemical alteration of the sugar molecule. In a bid to keep Splenda's signature yellow packets exciting, last year McNeil launched the Splenda Essentials line, which has added fiber and vitamins. A spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the company plans to introduce a stevia-based sweetener.
To get Truvia approved, Cargill focused its safety research on what it perceived to be stevia's best-testing component — Rebaudioside A. "We did a lot of research so that we could say to consumers, 'You have this worry-free way to consume sweetness,' " Ms. McFerson says.
[More from WSJ.com: Secrets of the Operating Room]
But some concerns linger. Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest points to studies in which animal and bacterial cells were administered a stevia component closely related to Rebaudioside A and showed genetic damage, which raises the prospect that it may cause cancer, CSPI said. (Other cell studies didn't show the same genetic damage, Mr. Jacobson says.)
He noted his concerns in an Aug. 4, 2008 letter to the FDA citing the studies. Cargill says those studies predated its development of Truvia. "The literature has been fraught with lots of issues with respect to purity of the material," says Amy Boileau, associate director for scientific and regulatory affairs at Cargill.
Mr. Jacobson would like to see further testing. "Natural does not automatically mean safe," he says.
The green packets are tucked behind the cash register; if you want it, you have to ask. That's because they have a way of disappearing. "People take a lot more than they need," says Liz Burkhart, a Whole Foods spokeswoman.
Truvia's maker, agricultural giant Cargill Inc., of Minneapolis, is aware that consumers often stock up on Truvia packets at coffee bars and in restaurants. Zanna McFerson, vice president and business director for Cargill Health and Nutrition, says Cargill is developing a dispenser that would limit the number of packets a consumer can take at once.
One reason Truvia is so appealing is its position as a "natural" alternative to aspartame, saccharin and other chemically derived sugar substitutes. Fans say they think Truvia's taste and texture are closer to sugar than those of older entries. It's true that Truvia pours out of the packet in convincing crystal-like granules, not in a powder. And when sprinkled on top of foods such as cereal, Truvia crunches.
[More from WSJ.com: Famous Hoteliers Get Wake-Up Call]
Some detractors, though, complain of a Truvia aftertaste, especially when it is used in coffee. And many customers blanch at the price. A 40-count box of Truvia packets retails for $4.29 at the Giant Foods supermarket in Silver Spring, compared with $2.99 for a 50-count box of Splenda.
Few consumer products have been a greater marketing challenge than no-calorie sweeteners. Companies have devoted teams of scientists to trying to develop better-tasting sugar-substitutes. "I don't think anyone's cracked the code," says Allen Adamson, managing director of the New York office of brand-consulting firm Landor Associates. Consumers resist, whether complaining about taste or worrying about safety.
Taste "used to be the only thing [marketers] had to worry about," Mr. Adamson says. "Does it taste good? Is there an aftertaste?" Now, he says, "the new challenge is to alleviate the lingering concerns . . . . Did they really test it on enough rats over a long enough period of time?"
Cargill makes Truvia from the stevia plant, a member of the chrysanthemum family and native to parts of South America. Leaves are harvested, dried and steeped in water to release the sweeteners found in Truvia's key ingredient, rebiana. Truvia also contains erythritol, a calorie-free sugar alcohol that diffuses the sweet taste across the palate and helps make the crystals.
Cargill, working with Coca-Cola Co., won Food and Drug Administration approval for Truvia in 2008. Since then, sales have overtaken long-established rivals including Sweet'N Low (pink packets with the sweetening agent saccharin) and Equal (light-blue packets with aspartame). Truvia is now the No. 2 branded sugar substitute, behind only Splenda (yellow packets with sucralose), according to retail-sales data for the year that ended Oct. 30, 2011 from SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago market-research firm. (Its numbers don't reflect sales at Wal-Mart, nor at warehouse clubs, food-service companies and other suppliers to restaurants, an important channel for sugar substitutes.)
[More from WSJ.com: New Ways Calories Can Add Up to Weight Gain]
Truvia's premium price may have something to do with why coffee shops find it hard to keep the product in stock. Mary Finnegan, a Truvia customer in Edina, Minn., says, "I might throw a couple in my purse" whenever it's available.
Cargill's Ms. McFerson says Truvia has a "clean, sweet taste." And it costs more because it's more expensive to produce a plant-derived product. "We'll always be more expensive because rather than making something in one place, you're growing plants and working with farmers all through the supply chain," she says.
Ruby Washington, a government program manager for the District of Columbia, first heard about Truvia at a church potluck and bought it for her husband, Henry, who had learned that he is a near-diabetic. Although he cringed at the taste of other sugar substitutes, Ms. Washington told him this one would be different. She says, "I told him it must be OK because they say it's natural."
"Natural," a largely unregulated word, casts a powerful spell over marketers, too. Since Truvia hit the market in 2008, it has shown up in more than 30 products, from Coca-Cola's Glacéau Vitamin Water Zero to Kraft Foods' Crystal Light Pure. So far, stevia-based sweeteners have proved most compatible with citrus and other light-flavored drinks. PepsiCo's Trop50, a reduced-calorie juice drink brand, is sweetened with PureVia, a stevia-based sweetener from Merisant, the Chicago marketer of Equal.
[Also see: Ways to Beat Your Food Cravings]
Merisant prices PureVia below Truvia. Paul Block, Merisant chief executive, says the PureVia customer wants a natural sweetener but doesn't want to pay "crazy" Truvia prices.
"We're not going after Truvia customers," Mr. Block says. "We're going after sugar users who can't afford Truvia." Stevia has helped energize the sugar substitute business. "It's on fire," he adds. "When [consumers] see things that are 'natural' and 'pure,' that is a very fertile area for growth.
Truvia says there are hundreds of new Truvia-sweetened products in the works. Tillamook, a dairy-farm cooperative based in Tillamook, Ore., is launching a Truvia-sweetened "light" yogurt in January. Marketing materials trumpet that it is "naturally sweetened."
"That's huge," says Jay Allison, vice president of sales and marketing at Tillamook. "We know we're not a Yoplait or a Dannon, but we wanted to have a great light yogurt. So we said let's not use anything artificial."
Ever since the FDA banned cyclamates in the 1960s due to links to bladder cancer in laboratory animals, sugar substitutes have faced skepticism. In 1977, foods containing saccharin were required to carry a warning label based on results of laboratory studies involving high doses of the artificial sweetener. In 2000, Congress enacted legislation eliminating the label warning.
The door remained open to rivals, though, and a new one hit the market in 2000, when Johnson & Johnson's McNeil Nutritionals unit came in with Splenda. Splenda's sweetening ingredient is sucralose, a chemical alteration of the sugar molecule. In a bid to keep Splenda's signature yellow packets exciting, last year McNeil launched the Splenda Essentials line, which has added fiber and vitamins. A spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the company plans to introduce a stevia-based sweetener.
To get Truvia approved, Cargill focused its safety research on what it perceived to be stevia's best-testing component — Rebaudioside A. "We did a lot of research so that we could say to consumers, 'You have this worry-free way to consume sweetness,' " Ms. McFerson says.
[More from WSJ.com: Secrets of the Operating Room]
But some concerns linger. Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest points to studies in which animal and bacterial cells were administered a stevia component closely related to Rebaudioside A and showed genetic damage, which raises the prospect that it may cause cancer, CSPI said. (Other cell studies didn't show the same genetic damage, Mr. Jacobson says.)
He noted his concerns in an Aug. 4, 2008 letter to the FDA citing the studies. Cargill says those studies predated its development of Truvia. "The literature has been fraught with lots of issues with respect to purity of the material," says Amy Boileau, associate director for scientific and regulatory affairs at Cargill.
Mr. Jacobson would like to see further testing. "Natural does not automatically mean safe," he says.
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