Abstract:
Stevia, the substitute for sugar contains very less calories. The reason for the growth of
interest in using stevia is because it helps people with diabetes in managing their blood sugar
levels. The health benefits of stevia are more as the demand for the same as sugar substitute is
increasing day by day. A group of 50 respondents participated in blind tasting of sugar-made
and stevia-made cookies. The liking of respondents toward stevia –made cookies were
examined in comparison to sugar-made cookies. The recorded liking of respondents were
analysed statistically using various statistical tools with the help of Minitab ’18 software. The
results proved that the respondents liked sugar-made cookies more than stevia-made cookies.
Further analysis to find out the reason which made sugar-made cookies to taste better was
done through qualitative interviews with 20 respondents who participated in the blind tasting.
The results of the qualitative interview was analysed in Nvivo software to get a visualization
of the interview conducted. The results proved that stevia-made sugar was not liked because
it was bitter, hard and leaves the palate cold after tasting, on the other hand, sugar-made
cookies were liked by the respondents as the respondents were used with the taste of sugar for
years and the cookie made out of sugar seems to be a taste which they are used to, soft,
crunchy and mouth melting. In nut shell, the results proved that the awareness of stevia sugar
and its health benefits were lesser among the respondents and the paper therefore, suggests
more awareness on health benefits of stevia and a lifestyle change for a valid reason, which
would further help to maintain a healthy lifestyle. The limitation of the paper being time and
budget constraint which therefore involved a smaller sample size and the respondents belong
to one city, that is, Bangalore and thus the results cannot be generalized.
