Stevioside, commonly known as stevioside, is extracted from the stevia rebvia, a herbaceous plant of the Asteraceae family. It is native to Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina and other places in South America. Stevia has a sweetness 200 to 350 times that of sucrose, while its calorie content is only 1/300 of that of sucrose. It is a high-sweetness, low-calorie, new, health-preserving and natural sweetener. It is widely used in the confectionery, beverage, food, pharmaceutical and other industries both at home and abroad, and is hailed as the "best natural sweetener" It is the third natural sucrose alternative with development value and health promotion after sugarcane and beet sugar, and is internationally hailed as the "third sugar source".
After stevia, people have isolated other stevioside compounds from stevia. There are 13 common ones. They have a similar tetracyclic diterpene chemical skeleton, all with steviol as the aglycone, and the R1 and R2 positions are replaced by glucose groups, xylose groups or rhamnose groups of different lengths, thus forming various glycosides with distinct taste and physicochemical properties
