In 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.
The following are the most commonly used sugar substitutes approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA):
Saccharin
This is the first recorded artificial sweetener (synthesized by Remsen and Fahlberg) on which most scientific research have been conducted compared to any other sweeteners. Saccharin has little solubility in water and usually its calcium and sodium salt is used in industry. It is extremely sweet and still there is not sufficient knowledge regarding the reason of its sweet flavour. It has been reported that any alteration to its physical structure may lead to irreparable change of its taste to the extent that it does not taste sweet anymore and depending on the receptors of taste buds it may unpleasantly taste unusual. Furthermore saccharin is known to have a bitter aftertaste which was resulted in further studying and developing other sweetening agents in order to achieve better taste to satisfy consumers’ desirability.
Cyclamate
This was developed with a great success with respect to taste improvement as it would offer more desirable taste of sweetness rather than saccharin. It was successfully used as an ingredient in “Sweet’n’Low” accompanied by saccharin and some other specific additives in the USA. Cyclamate was produced in different forms including tablet, liquid and interestingly it was used for soft drinks sweetening agent.
Using cyclamate was forbidden in 1970 In the USA by the FDA, when some research showed that cyclamate is likely to increase the risk of bladder cancer and liver trouble. However it is still allowed in other countries except for US and Canada marketed (along with some other sweeteners) and suitably recommended for baking or cooking as it has stability in heat.
Aspartame (APM)
Aspartame was first explored by James M. Schlatter in 1965 but officially (by the FDA) permitted for sale and consumption in dietary foods in 1981. It is believed to be 200 times sweeter than table sugar and has many industrial uses including “NutraSweet” products in addition to dairy foods like fruity yoghurts when developed to having lower percentage of calorie and labeled as ‘light’ or ‘diet’ on packages.
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