Originally published February 22 2006
Family-owned stevia company does big business in the sweetener market
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The Arizona Republic profiles Wisdom Natural Brands Co., owned by Mesa resident Jim May, who owns 70 percent of the U.S. market for products based on Stevia, a natural sweetener.
May and his son, former legislator Steve May, say their Gilbert-based Wisdom Natural Brands Co. has 70 percent of the U.S. market for products based on a naturally sweet herb called Stevia.
Products, such as SweetLeaf Stevia Plus and the popular new flavored Stevia Clear liquids, have gone beyond health-food stores into mainstream groceries and are about to be tested in Wal-Mart stores.
From the first time he tasted a Stevia leaf, Jim May was impressed with its sweetness, which is said to be at least 30 times as sweet as sugar.
He first thought he was being offered an illicit drug in 1982 when a man who had just returned from a stint with the Peace Corps in Paraguay showed him a cellophane bag with leaves in it.
He finally tasted a leaf and discovered that the longer it stayed in his mouth, the sweeter it became.
The business kept growing and moved from the Mays' garage after five years into a Tempe building, a Mesa building and, finally last fall, into a building that the company built in a Gilbert industrial park.
The 21 employees at the Gilbert plant mostly handle sales and packing.
Wisdom's biggest obstacle is that the federal Food and Drug Administration allows Stevia products to be sold only as dietary or nutritional supplements and not food additives or sweeteners.
The Mays say it would take millions of dollars and several years to finance the tests that FDA requires to prove Stevia's safety as a sweetener.
After three years of research, Steve May created Stevia Clear, a flavored liquid product that comes in six flavors.
The "dietary supplements" can be used to flavor and sweeten water, milk, unsweetened yogurt and other foods.
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