Ingredients --
Sweeteners
What would life be like if nothing was sweet?
There are many sweeteners in use today. Some are nutritive
sweeteners like sugar, others are non-nutritive like saccharine,
and still others sit on the border, with fewer calories than sugar,
or poorly metabolized in the body, or both.
Here is a list of sweeteners sorted according to how sweet they
taste:
The non-nutritive sweeteners stand out in the table because
they are so much sweeter than sugar.
Sugar is a
disaccharide, two simple sugars in one
molecule. The two simple sugars are glucose and fructose.
Glucose is not as sweet as sugar, but fructose is much sweeter.
This is why high fructose corn syrup is sweeter than sugar,
and why breaking the sugars in sucrose apart into glucose
and fructose (making
invert sugar) results in a sweeter
mixture.
Adding a hydrogen or two to a sugar makes a sugar alcohol.
The sugar alcohols
xylitol,
maltitol,
sorbitol, and
mannitol are all used
as sweeteners in food. They are not absorbed by the body
well, and they don't have as many calories. As with any
food that is not absorbed well, too much can have laxative effects.
Sugar alcohols are found in many foods naturally, and are
created by the body as a normal part of metabolism. They are
similar to sugar in their properties, and so they can be used
like sugar in cooking. Variations in their hygroscopicity
(absorbing water from the air), their melting points, and their
reactions with other ingredients determine which are used in
a particular recipe.
Sugar alcohols do not brown like sugar, and so they are used
when carmelized brown color is not desired.
Disaccharides like
maltose,
lactose, and
trehalose,
are used
for their similarity to sucrose, but with differences in some
properties such as sweetness, melting point, or hygroscopicity.