Sweeteners in Food

Sucrose (table sugar) is the sweetening agent most familiar to us. However, a number of other chemicals, both natural and synthetic, are used by commercial food manufacturers as sweeteners.

Natural sweeteners used in foods include, in addition to sucrose, fructose and invert sugar. Invert sugar is the mixture of fructose and glucose obtained from hydrolysis of sucrose.

Both fructose and invert sugar are sweeter than sucrose. Thus less of teh sweetener is needed in a food product to achieve the desired sweetness compared to the amount of sucrose that would be necessary.

Another natural sweetener used commercially is sorbital, produced by catalytic reduction of the correspobding aldohexose, D-glucose.

Sorbitol is not broken down by bacteria in the mouth as rapidly as sugar, and thus sorbitol does not promote tooth decay in the same manner as sucrose. Sorbitol is used to sweeten many "sugarless" candies and gum.

Saccharin was the first artificial sweetener, discovered in 1879. It is several hundred times sweeter than sucrose.

For many decades saccharin was used to sweeten foods used by diabetics or other people who had to limit their intake of sugar for medical reasons. In 1937, a second artificial sweetener was discovered, cyclamate. Although not as sweet as saccharin, cyclamte had the advantage of lacking the bitter aftertaste some people associated with saccharin-sweetened food and beverages.

By the 1960s, artificially sweetened foods were being consumed by a growing segment of the population, primarily for weight control purposes. Use of cyclamate as a sweetener was banned in 1970, following a research study implicating cyclamate as a carcinogen in laboratory animals.

In 1977, saccharin too was implicated as a carcinogen. Large quantities of saccharin were found to promote bladder cancer in rats. Saccharin too was to be taken off the market; however, Congress overruled the ban and instead required warning labels on saccharin-containing foods and beverages.

Since the early 1980s, a new artificial sweetener, aspartame has been available. Aspartame, marketed under the trade name Nutrasweet, has been widely accepted in diet beverages and some foods. A disadvantage of aspartame is that it breaks down upon heating. losing its sweetness. Thus diet foods requiring cooking cannot be sweetened with aspartame. Aspartame can also pose medical problems for person suffering from phenylketonuria. or PKU. Aspartame releases the amino acid phenylalanine into the body. Persons afflicted with PKU cannot metabolize phenylalanine, and if levels become too high, permanent brain damage may result.