Low-Cal Sweet Tooth Satisfaction

If Mary Poppins were around today, it’s doubtful she’d encourage “a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down.” That’s because sugar (sucrose) and similar 4-calorie-per-gram carbohydrate sweeteners have been implicated as contributors to America’s obesity crisis.

Many health advocates have dubbed the 4-calories-per-gram sweeteners as “empty calories.” However, in many applications, sugar is anything but “empty,” as sugar performs a host of functions in addition to providing sweetness.

Sweeter than sugar

Today’s food designers are challenged with reducing calories, maintaining sweetness and delivering a product that structurally resembles the sugar-sweetened version, often by partial replacement of sugar or other carbohydrate sweetener with a combination of high-intensity sweeteners, polyols and other sweetening agents, including ingredients described as enhancers, herbs and plant extracts.

For example, earlier this year, the Dannon Company, White Plains, NY, introduced Light & Fit 0% Plus, a nonfat yogurt that contains a mere 60 calories per 4-oz. cup. This is achieved through a unique combination of four sweeteners: acesulfame potassium (acesulfame K), aspartame, fructose and sucralose.

Acesulfame K, aspartame and sucralose are three of the five FDA-approved artificial sweeteners. The other two are the recently approved neotame and the longest approved—saccharin. All five are considered high-intensity sweeteners, with usage levels so low in any application that they contribute virtually no calories.

Uniquely fructose

In Light & Fit 0% Plus, the only caloric carbohydrate sweetener is fructose. Interestingly, fructose also happens to be the sweetest of all naturally occurring carbohydrates. In fact, fructose is 1.73 times sweeter than sugar.

Fructose exhibits a sweetness synergy effect when used in combination with other sweeteners—caloric and noncaloric—with the relative sweetness of the blended sweeteners perceived as greater than the sweetness calculated from the individual components. The heightened sweetness from such a blend means a reduction in calories, because less total sweetener is needed. Of course, if only high-intensity sweeteners are used, calories are even more reduced.

Relative sweetness of fructose in an application depends on the conditions, including temperature, solids, pH and other ingredients. Calorie reduction depends on the sweeteners used in the blend, which is dictated by the flavor and cost objectives of the formulator.

Further, all sweeteners vary as to when they exhibit their characteristic sweet flavor during product consumption, as well as when the sweetness disappears. Most high-intensity sweeteners display a prolonged extinction time referred to as “linger.” Sweetness linger can be beneficial in applications such as chewing gum, where prolonged sweetness is a desirable quality. However, in some applications, such as yogurt, a lingering sweetness is unpleasant. Further, some high-intensity sweeteners have a delayed sweetness onset—often advantageous when blending sweeteners.

For example, aspartame has no initial burst of sweetness, but the sweetness lingers. Fructose provides the initial sweetness burst in a fructose-aspartame blend, so aspartame levels can be decreased, thus halting the lingering sweetness.

Besides flavor advantages, fructose contributes solids, which often are required when other caloric-carbohydrate sweeteners, such as sugar, are replaced solely by high-intensity sweeteners. Depending on the application, the solids from fructose can reduce the solids required from other sources, such as low- or non-sweet carbohydrates (i.e., fructooligosaccharides, gums, polyols, starches, etc.) or proteins. That translates into possible cost savings.

Intensely sweet

At 7,000 to 13,000 times sweeter than sugar, neotame is the sweetest of all approved sweeteners. “Like other high-intensity sweeteners, the actual sweetness potency of neotame is dependent on its concentration, as well as the matrix in which it is used,” says Ihab Bishay, senior vice president, research and development, The NutraSweet Company, Chicago.

Neotame is made of the same two amino acids—aspartic acid and phenylalanine—that comprise NutraSweet’s original high-intensity sweetener—aspartame—which is only about 180 times as sweet as sugar. “Though neotame is a derivative of aspartame, it is 30 to 60 times sweeter than aspartame,” says Bishay.