FDBusiness.com

Norway’s leading ice cream manufacturer Hennig-Olsen has launched its first stevia sweetened ice cream containing Real Stevia™. It is the first stevia-sweetened ice cream in the Norwegian market. With Hennig-Olsen’s stringent quality and safety controls the ice cream has taken over two years to develop. The Real Stevia Company’s products are characterized by high quality and taste and they undergo extensive quality controls and have traceability down to the individual farmer.

Real Stevia™ is used in the Norwegian ice cream manufacturer Hennig-Olsen’s stevia sweetened vanilla ice cream ‘Easy’. The popular ice cream manufacturer launched its ice cream sweetened with Real Stevia™ in November.

“Stevia is an excellent ingredient to use in ice cream, both from a taste and health perspective, and we are delighted that a company like Hennig-Olsen choose our stevia. Choosing a high quality stevia ingredient is reflected in the taste and is as important as choosing quality cocoa beans or grapes to get great tasting chocolate or wine,” says Sophia Horn af Rantzien, Managing Director of The Real Stevia Company.

Stevia extract is approximately 300 times sweeter than sugar and is made up steviol glycosides extracted from the stevia plant. Unlike ordinary sugar (sucrose), which consists of one molecule, steviol glycosides are composed of a family of molecules with different properties. This means that the way the leaves are grown and the technology used to produce the extract affects the taste of the end product. The Real Stevia Company is the world leader in organically grown stevia leaves and collaborate with farmers in Paraguay and China to ensure a sustainable agriculture, which is reflected in the taste and quality of the company’s products.

Real Stevia™ is already used in many ice creams by producers across Europe. Some examples are, “Weight Watchers”, Alvesta ice cream and Hodell’s quark ice cream.