Imperial Sugar Company (ISC) may have cracked the code in creating an all-natural, reduced-sugar sweetener that has a taste profile indistinguishable from sugar. But the proof will be in the pudding –or, to be more precise, in 1,500 commercially produced cookies. ur product doesn’t have the bitter note you find in pure stevia,” says Darrell Gerdes, manager of research and new product development for ISC. “Instead, it gives a clean sugar flavor. In taste panels, when people compared the taste of Steviacane to pure sugar and plain stevia powder, the taste profile for Steviacane scored exactly the same as sugar.”