Consumer commitment to reduce sugar consumption continues to drive industry opportunities to develop non-nutritive sweeteners that perform and taste like table sugar. Blending nutritive sweeteners with high-intensity sweeteners (HIS) has become the standard, with stevia being the common go-to, typically in blends with everything from corn-derived sucrose or dextrose to maltose or tapioca sugar, or recent arrivals like coconut sugar.
For complete or near-complete caloric reduction, stevia is often blended with polyols such as erythritol or maltitol, or the oligosaccharide inulin. The goal for most of these systems is to provide a natural, granulated, low-calorie or calorie-free sweetener that bakes and browns in recipes and sweetens and measures like granulated sucrose.