Sugar Substitutes

Sugar SubstitutesIn the ancient times honey was believed to be the first sweetener used especially in some countries like China and Greece. Sugar cane then became popular from which saccharose was extracted and widely consumed by people worldwide as a regular sugar.

These days that obesity has become a great concern mostly among people of developed countries, the extent of added sugar in a wide range of food products plays an important role in raising calorie and subsequently increasing body weight. As a result, food and drug industries were encouraged to develop sugar substitute profitably.



Generally a food additive that has similar characteristic like sugar in terms of flavour would be considered as a sugar substitute. It is either natural or synthetic.
The latter is usually known as artificial sweetener and it has the advantage of having dramatically less contributing calorie in addition to the benefit that only minute amounts are required to be added to food due to its tremendous sweet flavour compared to sucrose (a disaccharide made up of glucose and fructose). These low calorie sweeteners are said to have no nutrition value and sometimes classified as non-nutritive sweeteners.

Permitted sugar substitutes for food application mostly involve chemical compounds which are artificially synthesized. However, natural sugar substitutes are regularly used comprising sorbitol and xylitol; present in berries, fruit and vegetables which are obtained by catalytic hydrogenation of reducing sugar.

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