Products sweetened with stevia?

That’s a goood question. At cafes in Rome last October, the sweeteners offered remained sugar, sometimes “raw” brownish sugar, saccharine (like Sweet n Low) and sucralose (like Splenda). Truvia or other stevia sweetener didn’t seem to be widely offered, although I didn’t ask for it.

Not Italy, but Lily’s Chocolate bars, from Boulder, Colorado, have recently become available around here. The dark chocolate with almonds is especially good - better than the sea salt caramel. I wonder whether they’re making inroads into other markets?

Lily's is available at Walmart

We buy Lily’s 92% dark chocolate from Amazon in 12-bar cases, and my husband is addicted. Now I am wondering if we will be able to get anything similar in Italy..

Cyn—-do you recall if they use the same color code system for the artificial sweetener packets? Pink for saccharine, yellow for Sucralose? Stevia/Truvia is green here. But I hate to buy the individual packets. I could just plan to take 3 Oz. of the powder, but that doesn’t solve hubby’s chocolate fix.

I’ve found stevia tablets in a few grocery stores at home and on Amazon. I brought some with me to Europe. That won’t help with the chocolate bars though.

Although I haven’t done a comprehensive comparison, it seems the pink and yellow package coloring is pretty much universal, in the U.S. and Europe, for non-sugar sweeteners. The blue (Equal aspartame) aren’t nearly as common in Europe in the U.S. And the “raw” sugar, which implies less-processed than white granulated sugar, I guess, seems to often come in tan, or brown packets - but it’s still sugar.

While convenient, the little packets sure are expensive, compared to a baggie of loose sweetener. We found out the hard way, last fall, that TSA is extremely suspicious of any powdered substance. Some hot chocolate mix in my husband’s carry on got him treated by a very officious, shouting TSA person, who suggested that anyone with any powdered substance was a terrorist. Multiple swabbing and screening, double full-body searches, more yelling, and we finally got through. That’s from having an addiction to Mocafe Azteca chocolate mix. Now I’m stuck on Lily’s bars, but I may not be bringing them with me on our upcoming trip in 2 days - no Azteca for my husband this time, either.

Stevia in Italy is mainly used inside some products as ingredients. There are some producers who sold even the small monodose bags, but seldom I saw them in bars.
Chocolate with stevia is produced, for example by "Cioccolateria Veneziana" or "Bio-Mondo".

The color code used in USA (and UK and some European countries) for sweeteners is not used in Italy. Is not mandatory or suggested at all. Is often used a brown bag for raw sugar (mainly if cane sugar), but is more marketing than a request. is of course possible found some imported products who have an international packaging, but is not a standard.

Thanks! It is good to know we can find the chocolate in Venice. Now I wonder about gelato . . . It that would be trickier, as omitting the sugar would change the texture of the frozen product.

I have this same problem here in the US...many places don't have stevia packets.
I went to Costco and bought a box of 400 for like $10, and just put a bunch in little ziplocs and keep them in the car, briefcase, carry-on luggage, etc. so I never have to worry!