An Overview of The Organoleptic Assessment of Herbal Teas with the addition of Stevia Leaves

Abstract

The current COVID-19 pandemic situation encourages many efforts to adapt to new situations. At the individual level, adaptation is in the form of changes in various healthy living behaviors in all aspects. In addition, one thing that is also very important to note is the individual's internal immune system. Various natural products have been researched to have positive benefits in increasing body resistance/immunity, including green tea leaves, moringa, meniran, and pegagan. The current pandemic situation has inspired us to combine various natural ingredients that have been proven to have immunomodulatory activity in the combination of herbal tea preparations. Herbal teas generally have a less favorable taste and aroma because most of the natural ingredients are naturally nutritious, each of which has a distinctive taste and aroma. The purpose of this study was to obtain an overview of respondents' assessment of the taste, aroma and color of the combination herbal tea preparations that we added stevia leaves as a natural sweetener. The research was conducted at the Stikes Pamenang research laboratory involving 50 panelists who gave sensory assessments including taste, aroma, color and overall acceptance of herbal tea formulations. The results of this study indicate that the addition of stevia leaves to herbal tea preparations makes herbal tea preparations more preferable in terms of taste