Sweets and sugary drinks are everywhere in today's food. A large amount of refined sugar affects blood sugar levels, making many people face the problem of obesity and overweight.
The significance of sugar substitutes is to avoid the negative impact of sugar on health. Therefore, there are many drinks such as sugar-free cola and zero-calorie drinks on the market. These so-called sugar-free drinks are made to be sugar-free but taste sweet because of the addition of sugar substitutes.
Sweeteners are mainly divided into two types:
Nutritive sweeteners: including sugar and sugar alcohols. The familiar sucrose, glucose, and fructose are all sugars. In addition to being sweet, they also provide calories.
Non-nutritive sweeteners (Non-nutritive, or sugar substitutes, artificial sweeteners):
Sugar substitutes are usually low in calories, or even contain no calories, but contain hundreds of times more sweetness than sucrose, so they are also used to add to functional foods for diabetic patients.
1. Today's most popular artificial sweetener is aspartame. Aspartame contains no calories or carbohydrates, but its sweetness is about two hundred times that of sucrose. Aspartame is added to sugar-free cola, and this sugar substitute is also added to many sugar-free beverages. Aspartame is not suitable for heating to high temperatures, so it is not recommended to use aspartame when baking and cooking.
2. Sucralose, also known as sucralose, tastes similar to sucrose, so it is the most commonly used sweet substitute and is currently widely used in processed foods such as beverages, syrups, dairy products, jams, and candied fruits.
3. The sweetness of stevia is about two or three hundred times that of sucrose. It is known as a natural sweetener and is named after a South American shrub called stevia. Maltodextrin or glucose may be added to the extraction and refining process of stevia, so it may also affect blood sugar and insulin. It is recommended to choose liquid stevia.
4. Monk fruit extract MogrosideⅤ is another natural sweetener similar to stevia, and its sweetness is about two hundred times that of sucrose. It is an ideal natural sugar substitute. In 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also publicly stated that monk fruit is a safe food and a safe edible sugar substitute.
