Chem. Senses 35: 433–443, 2010 doi:10.1093/chemse/bjq033 Advance Access publication April 22, 2010 Stevia and Saccharin Preferences in Rats and Mice Anthony Sclafani1,2, Mahsa Bahrani1, Steven Zukerman1,2 and Karen Ackroff1,2 1Department of Psychology, Brooklyn College, 2900 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11210 USA and 2The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016 USA Correspondence to be sent to: Anthony Sclafani, Department of Psychology, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY 11210, USA. e-mail:
[email protected] Accepted March 23, 2010 Abstract Use of natural noncaloric sweeteners in commercial foods and beverages has expanded recently to include compounds from the plant Stevia rebaudiana. Little is known about the responses of rodents, the animal models for many studies of taste systems and food intake, to stevia sweeteners. In the present experiments, preferences of female Sprague–Dawley rats and C57BL/6J mice for different stevia products were compared with those for the artificial sweetener saccharin. The stevia component rebaudioside A has the most sweetness and least off-tastes to human raters. In ascending concentration tests (48-h sweetener vs. water), rats and mice preferred a high-rebaudioside, low-stevioside extract as strongly as saccharin, but the extract stimulated less overdrinking and was much less preferred to saccharin in direct choice tests. Relative to the extract, mice drank more pure rebaudioside A and showed stronger preferences but still less than those for saccharin. Mice also preferred a commercial mixture of rebaudioside A and erythritol (Truvia). Similar tests of sweet receptor T1R3 knockout mice and brief- access licking tests with normal mice suggested that the preferences were based on sweet taste rather than post-oral effects.