Soft drink sugars

Quite a few papers in the medical literature have actually made that point. One of the most recent came from Danish investigators in 2006. Wine drinkers in the Copenhagen study have healthier diets than do people who prefer beer. They buy and eat more fruits, vegetables, olives, low-fat cheese, and cooking oil. Beer drinkers in Denmark, on the other hand, consume fast food, soft drinks, sugar, and saturated and trans fats. To add insult to injury, those wine drinkers were better educated, healthier, and leaner. California investigators have come to the same conclusion about wine drinkers in that state. And, it appears, the same applies to French wine drinkers. 

Also see ADDITIVES SOFT DRINKS SUGAR SWEETENING AGENTS and TASTE. 

Another controversial food group is the low calorie sweeteners (also referred to as nonnutritive sweeteners, artificial sweeteners, or sugar substitutes). Artificial sweeteners provide sweetness without the addition of excessive calories. They can be found in diet soft drinks, sugar-free puddings, light yogurts, candies, and as table-top packets. 

At least six specifications of standards for granulated sugar quaUty are appHcable ia the United States. These include Codex JUimentarius Food Chemicals Codex (ECC) (4), US. Pharmacopeia (USP) and National Formula (NE) (5), National Soft Drink Association (6), National Canners Association, and Mihtary Standard-900 for white sugar. These standards are intended to set limits on various components, including, but not necessarily limited to, polarization, invert or reducing sugar, ash, moisture, color, sulfur dioxide, arsenic, lead, and copper. 

Quality Spedfications and Test Procedures for Bottlers Granulated and Eiquid Sugar, National Soft Drink Association, Washington, D.C., 1975. 

Instant Tea-Based Products. Powdered soft drinks and ready-to-dtink teas are produced by formulating instant teas with acids, flavors, sugars, or noncaloric sweeteners. Lemon is by far the predominant flavor used but tropical, citms, and berry flavors are also quite common. 

Neotame is about eight thousand times sweeter than sugar, so only 6 milligrams is needed to sweeten a typical 12-ounce soft drink. 

Acesulfame potassium is a noncaloric sweetener that is two hundred times sweeter than sugar. It is used in tabletop sweeteners, toothpastes, soft drinks, desserts, baked goods, and canned foods. 

Aspartame is a low-calorie sweetener used in many foods and drinks. Because it is between 160 and 200 times sweeter than sugar, only very small amounts are needed to sweeten a product. A typical 12-ounce low-calorie soft drink will have 180 milligrams of aspartame in it. 

Most soft drinks are characterized by carbonated water, sugar, and caffeine. Variations in soft drinks generally advertise either flavor differences, or the absence of one or more of the three main ingredients. 

When you crack open a can of Coca Cola or Pepsi, you are tasting some of the fruits of bioohemioal engineering Most nondiet soft drinks sold in the United States are sweetened with high-fruotose oorn syrup (MFCS), a substitute for the natural sugar that oomes from cane and beets. MFCS, produced by an enzymatic reaction, is an example of the suooessful application of chemical engineering principles to bioohemioal synthesis. So successful, in fact, that more than 1.5 billion of MFCS was sold in the United States last year. 

The refractive index also varies with the amount of substance in a mixture. Most often, refractive index is used to assess the concentration of sugar in wine, soft drinks, cough medicines and other preparations having relatively high concentrations of sucrose. Refractive index is also used to determine the concentration of alcohol in fermented products. For sucrose solutions the refractive index varies from 1.3330 (pure water) to 1.5033 when the solution contains 85% sucrose. This is an increase of approximately 0.0002 in the refractive index for each 0.1%... 

Fructose has a much sweeter taste than glucose, hence the transformation of glucose derived from enzymatic hydrolysis of starch from com, provides an alternative sweetener to sucrose (a disaccharide of glucose and fructose). This replaced the use of sugar cane by the US soft drinks and candy industry (and effectively destroyed the economy of Cuba in the process). 

Part D Percent Sugar in Soft Drinks by Refractive Index Measurements... 

The sugar concentration, measured as sucrose, of a soft drink was determined using a refractometer with a °Brix scale. The refractometer reading was 10.5° Brix. What is the sugar concentration ... 

Aspartame is the most successful and widely used artificial sweetener. It is roughly 100 times as sweet as cane sugar. It is methyl ester of dipeptide formed from aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Use of aspartame is limited to cold foods and soft drinks because it is unstable at cooking temperature. 

Sucrose is rapidly dissociated into glucose and fructose by the enzymes in your mouth and in your stomach, and your taste receptors sense sweetness. A problem (for Coca Cola) is that fructose tastes five times as sweet as glucose so 40% of the sucrose they purchase is wasted compared to pure fructose. A problem for you is that both sugars have the same calories, and the soft drink companies want to advertise lower calories for an aceeptable sweetness. 

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