PARTICULAR CASE OF JAPAN

We have already evoked the introduction of stevia in Japan after the second world war in the article on the scientific studies of the XXth century.

Japan became in three decades the country the most advanced in the knowledge and the use of stevia and its by-products.

One of the very first uses of stevia in Japan was in the soy sauce, inescapable element of the local culinary tradition.

Indeed, the producers of sauce soya were confronted with a problem at the beginning of the XXth century because their sauces were considered too much salted, salt was notably used for the flavour conferred on the product but also for these conservative properties.

They used then an extract of root of licorice, the glycyrrhizine, to reduce the proportion of salt without changing the taste of the product.

The usage of this extract of licorice was generalized in the preparation of the Japanese pickles way, in the dried seafoods and in the dough of soya.

During the second world war, the production of glycyrrhizine was stopped then resumed in the 50s. Only, at this moment there were other sweeteners, such as the saccharin, that had made their entrance on the Japanese market.

Nevertheless, the usage of the glycyrrhizine remained thanks to outlets found before war. This substance was asked moreover all the more as sweeteners of synthesis were forbidden in Japan in 1969.

Only, the supplies of Japan in licorice were considered too vague because the producing countries of time had political systems considered unstable (Russia, the People's Republic of China).

The coming of the stevia gave then the idea to the producers of soy sauce to replace the extract of licorice by  stevia; nevertheless, it was not an immediate success because stevia possesses a much more marked sugar taste than extracts from licorice and the soy sauce was distorted there because it took then a sweet - salted taste.

Actually, they combined the glycyrrhizine and the stevia, what allowed them to maintain in the soy sauce its secular taste but also to limit their dependence in roots of licorice.

The demand in stevia increased then gradually, finding regularly new uses.

The extracts of stevia having undergone a purification, to approach more the taste of sugar, were used then massively in the industry of ices and sorbets, of fresh products like yoghourts, sweetening substances of table, cakes and bread, in the drinks (in particular Pocari Sweat Stevia, power drink for the sportsmen, very known in Japan)...

It is estimated that in 1996, 200 tons of extracts of stevia were used per annum in Japan, that is to say the equivalent of 2000 tons dried leaves.

Nowadays, the request does not cease growing in Japan, especially thanks to emerging outlets in the field of the products not salted by the refined steviosides and rebaudiosides, which taste approaches that of traditional sugar.