As pressure to deliver products with reduced sugar mounts, Cargill continues to sweeten its stevia product offerings with widespread commercial availability of its advanced EverSweet™ + ClearFlo™ technology. The new sweetener system brings together the company’s premier stevia sweetener with a natural flavor, a combination that provides wide-ranging benefits that include flavor modification, improved solubility and stability in formulations, and faster dissolution.
“With EverSweet + ClearFlo, we’re taking stevia sweeteners to the next level, reimagining the possibilities and paving the way for a new round of product innovation,” said Andrew Ohmes, Cargill’s global director for high intensity sweeteners. “It really is a game-changer for sugar-reduction technology, making it possible for stevia to go where it has never gone before.”
Using EverSweet’s quick sweetness onset and high sweetness potency as a foundation, EverSweet + ClearFlo goes a step further to create an even more sugar-like experience—especially at higher concentrations. This new sweetening system also helps manage off flavors from other ingredients used in formulation, be it earthy notes from proteins, bitterness from caffeine or metallic tastes from potassium chloride.
It offers equally impressive solubility benefits. While Reb M stevia products like EverSweet provide the best stevia sweetness profile, they can be limited by a lower solubility maximum. This comes into play for applications using concentrates to deliver sweetness, such as throw syrups in beverages. EverSweet + ClearFlo dramatically boost solubility, enabling far more concentrated solutions than Reb M alone. The improved solubility opens the door for stevia to be used in applications such as foodservice fountain drinks or flavor syrups.
The new sweetener system also results in improved dissolution properties. Unlike standalone Reb M sweeteners, EverSweet + ClearFlo dissolves in water at ambient temperatures so no heating is required. For beverage processing facilities without heating capabilities, this is a significant advance. Those same characteristics offer benefits to long-time stevia users, too, as the sweetener system’s near-instantaneous dissolution enables faster manufacturing times.
Cargill’s new EverSweet + ClearFlo sweetener offers formulators one more advantage as it supports simple label declarations. In the U.S., EverSweet can appear on ingredient statements as stevia sweetener; ClearFlo labels as a natural flavor. Cargill proprietary research consistently finds consumers approve of these straightforward designations.
“There are a lot of tools out there that might help with solubility or dissolution or flavor or stability,” Ohmes said. “But EverSweet + ClearFlo address all of those points, which is why this sweetener system stands apart in the market today.”
Cargill first debuted the technology in 2019 and spent the ensuing years refining the offering, readying it for use in reduced-sugar applications that require higher concentrations of stevia, including carbonated soft drinks, energy drinks, alcoholic drinks, fruit concentrates, and dairy, coffee and beverage syrups. Following successful testing with food and beverage customers, commercial quantities of EverSweet + ClearFlo are now available for sale.
