HB Natural Ingredients' Vitosa stevia sweetener gains FDA GRAS 'No Objection' status

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©GettyImages / Luis Echeverri Urrea (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

HB Natural Ingredients has received a "Letter of No Objection" for its stevia sweetener portfolio, Vitosa, confirming that the FDA has "no questions" regarding the self-affirmed GRAS status of Vitosa.

HB Natural Ingredients, a subsidiary of BGG World, is a specialty plant-based ingredients provider of natural flavors, stevia sweeteners, stevia leaf extracts, and licorice root extracts, including MAG (Mono Ammonium Glycyrrhizinate).

According to HB Natural Ingredients, Vitosa stevia sweeteners are a cost-effective sweetener solution that enables a 100% sugar reduction in various food and beverage products such as carbonated soft drinks, juices, energy and sports drinks, flavored water, dairy products, cookies, candy, and many other product applications for zero-calorie formulations. 

The ingredients supplier also claims that Vitosa has a full-bodied, more rounded sweetness and taste profile and that its sensory testing found that it delivers a "high overall sugar-like performance that consumers desire."

"Our Vitosa stevia sweeteners are excellent high intensity sweeteners with a powerful dual benefit: the capability to deliver deep sugar reduction and maintain sugar-like taste with no bitterness," noted Dr Varuzhan Abelyan, chairman and chief of science & technology. 

“With Vitosa, it is now possible to develop a much broader range of great tasting natural flavor systems, and reduced and sugar-free product development solutions that deliver great taste while also reducing calories.”

Vitosa is available in three varieties: Vitosa Delight, which provides a sweetness onset similar to sucrose; Vitosa Active, which lacks the bitterness even at high sugar equivalent levels; and Vitosa Match, which provides a "reduced sweet aftertaste and lingering sweetness perception," claims HB Natural Ingredients.