Talk:Steviol glycoside

Contradiction with German and Spanish articles

The English article currently claims that one of the sugar in the glycoside is rhamnose, while the images of the molecular structure in the German and Spanish articles show only glucose moieties. Icek 10:26, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

There isn't a contradiction; simply an error of omission in the German and Spanish articles. The German and Spanish articles should be fixed. There are plenty of references (this one for example) saying that rhamnose is a component of rebaudioside C and dulcoside A. Those aren't the primary components of the stevia plant, so the German and Spanish article authors probably felt no need to mention them. --- Amatulic (talk) 18:18, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, it's clear to me now. Icek (talk) 15:11, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Why are physical attributes always being omitted in Wikipedia articles?

How the hell does it taste? Metallic like saccharine, cloying like fructose, hint of bitter aftertaste even when pure, just like sucrose? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.168.153.147 (talk) 17:46, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Why don't you first read and comply with the official policy Wikipedia:Civility before you post again?

And perhaps you should read the article more carefully. The information is there, in plain English. It tastes sweet, although some versions have a bitter aftertaste.

Subtle flavor descriptors are subjective. To me, stevia extract tastes intensely sweet, with a subtlety hinting of Kool-Aid. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:32, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

Image in infobox

The compound in the infobox is unglycosylated steviol. It should either be captioned as such or the image replaced with the glycosylated form which runs the risk of being uninformative due to compressed detail.Novangelis (talk) 17:20, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Good suggestion. There are many glycosilated forms of steviol glycoside. That's why just the aglycone is displayed there. However, I changed the label according to your suggestion. ~Amatulić (talk) 20:24, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Source for "N times sweeter than sucrose"

The original article claimed that steviol glicosides were '40 to 450 times sweeter than sucrose" and provided the following note:

<ref><!--note-->The sweetness multiplier "300 times" comes from subjective evaluations by a panel of test subjects tasting various dilutions compared to a standard dilution of sucrose. Sources referenced in this article say steviosides have up to 250 times the sweetness of sucrose, but others, including stevioside brands such as SweetLeaf, claim 250-300 times. 1/3 to 1/2 teaspoon (1.6–2.5 ml) of stevioside powder is claimed to have equivalent sweetening power to 1 cup (240 ml) of sugar.</ref>

I lowered the claim to "up to 250 times", because we should use only the claim from scientific evaluations; higher claims by marketing of some brands may not even deserve to be mentioned. However, I had to temporarily remove (again) the note above, because the link provided (to a web archive page!) is only a questionnaire, and I cannot see any report there. Could please someone find reliable reports to back the "250 times" claim and/or the "1 cup of sugar" claim? Thanks. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 05:53, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

• Even worse: the only modern reference in the article is to a "FAQ" by a Canadian govt agency, and the link is broken. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 06:24, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

• I got a source for sweetness comparisons from the stevia article:

<ref>"Measurement of the relative sweetness of stevia extract, aspartame and cyclamate/saccharin blend as compared to sucrose at different concentrations". Plant Foods for Human Nutrition. 54 (2): 119–129. 1999. doi:10.1023/A:1008134420339. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)</ref>

However, although it repreats the "300x" claim in the introduction (without citing the source), their results (starting at page 126) say that Stevia extract ("SrB", ~80% stevioside, ~8% rebaudioside A) is only ~150x sweeter than sucrose, at 3% sucrose, and only ~100x sweeter, at 10% sucrose. I have left "250 times" in the article, but now we really need to find a reliable source for that. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 06:58, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

I have a copy of that document in the dead link, sent to me by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada after I asked about the disappearance of the document after their web site was reconfigured. It does say that the stevioside components range from 40-250X sweeter than sugar. The source still exists, you just have to ask for it. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:25, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

the wayback machine had the page archived. i just fixed it. Jytdog (talk) 22:32, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

You're kidding. When I checked it back in 2008 when that link got lost, the wayback machine refused to serve me anything due to a robots.txt restriction or something. That's why I wrote to the agency, and they sent me a copy. I didn't think to check it again just now. Good to know, it's one of the more useful references on the subject, not just for the glycosides but also for the plant article. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:35, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

:) Jytdog (talk) 22:59, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks! By following the links in that page, I found an article bublished by the same author in a scientific journal, which has the relevant information. That is better than a link to a webpage that has been deleted years ago. I am copying here the refernce to the archived webpage, just in case:

<ref name="faq">Brandle, J. (2004-08-19). "FAQ – Stevia, Nature's natural low calorie sweetener". Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Archived from the original on 2007-05-23. Retrieved 2006-11-08.</ref>

In any case, there another article by Brandle et al (2007, on biosynthesis of steviol and glycosides) gives lower sweetness values: ~240 for rebaudioside A, ~140 for stevioside. The latter is compatible with the values found by Cardello et al for mixed stevioside extract (80% stevioside, 8% rebaudioside A). So the "300x" seems to be somewhat exaggerated indeed. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 05:12, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Glycemic Response

This article reports that "[Steviol Glycides] do not induce a glycemic response when ingested, because humans cannot metabolize stevia". There is a Cephalic Phase Insulin Release (CPIR) for all sweeteners (artificial or otherwise) which would in turn result in a glycemic response, in particular, a glycemic drop. Perhaps the article should report no "glycemic increase" rather than no "glycemic response". See, for examples: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9062523 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4591378/ Scott Bowden (talk) 14:40, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

"All sweeteners" is a pretty big leap to conclude from a study that tested only three. I wouldn't call that a reliable source for such a statement. ~Anachronist (talk) 15:03, 27 February 2018 (UTC)