Sugar-free products

If a sugar-free high boiling is to be as sweet as a sugar- and glucose-based product then intense sweeteners must be added. The choice of intense sweetener has to be made on the basis of a number of technical, legislative and financial considerations. 

As mentioned on pages 135 and 136, aspartame might be thought to be too heat sensitive for this application, but in practice this is not so if aspartame is added to the process as late as possible. All other heat sensitive ingredients like flavour, colour and acid have to be added while the mass is still sufficiently warm to be flowable but not too hot to cause decomposition. In results reported in Kennedys Confection, less than 5% of the aspartame was lost upon addition losses of aspartame during storage were found to be equivalent to only a 2% loss of sweetness in a year. Presumably this is because of the low water activity in the finished product. The clean, quickly released sweetness of aspartame works well in these products. 

Acesulfame K is, in contrast, sufficiently heat stable to be added at the beginning of the boil. Unfortunately, the sweetness profile is not as good. One approach to using intense sweeteners is to use a combination of ingredients, and common combinations such as aspartame and acesulfame K or aspartame and saccharin are used. Where they are legal, cyclamates are also used in this application. 

The Problems of Making Sugar-free High Boilings from Isomalt 

The inherent technical problems of making high boilings from isomalt are considerable but they have been solved. Isomalt has only 45-60% of the sweetness of sugar, and therefore the reduced sweetness is normally made up by adding an intense sweetener. Also, the solubility of isomalt at 20 °C is only 24.5 g per 100 g water thus at low temperatures isomalt 

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Some laxatives (e.g., bulk-forming agents) contain significant amounts of sodium or sugar and may be unsuitable for salt-restricted or diabetic patients. When low-sodium or sugar-free products are not used, monitor serum concentrations of sodium and glucose as needed with chronic use. 

Figure 13.1 One calorie controlled and two sugar-free products...

Another reason for consuming sugar-free products is the belief that refined sugar is in some way unhealthy. Tooth friendly claims are highly specific the product must be tested to see that it does not cause a fall in pH during eating, and this system requires the use of a specialised pH electrode strapped to the teeth of a volunteer. To pass this test the product must be free of any fermentable carbohydrate and acids - this does have the odd effect in that some products which contain concentrated fruit juice fail the test and have to be re-formulated. The calorific values accepted by the authorities are not universal. The current position in the European Union is that the polyols are only partially absorbed to the extent of 2.4 kcal g 1 as opposed to 4 kcal g 1 if they are completely absorbed. For example, the polyol lactitol has the following accepted values ... 

Sugar alcohols Confectionery products Chewing gum, sugar-free products, etc.—i.e., sorbitol... 

Many "sugar-free" products contain sugar alcohols, such as D-sorbitol and xylitol. 

Aspartame, which is marketed as NutraSweet and Equal, is used in a large number of sugar-free products. It is a noncarbohydrate sweetener made of aspartic acid and a methyl ester of phenylalanine. It does have some caloric value, but it is so sweet that only a very small quantity is needed. However, phenylalanine, one of the breakdown products, poses a danger to anyone who cannot metabolize it properly, a condition called phenylketonuria (PKU). 

Food. By far the largest use of pectin is in jams, jellies, and preserves, with low-methoxy pectin being primarily used in low-sugar or sugar-free products. 

The reduction of aldose sugars with sodium borohydride gives, as we would expect, a primary alcohol in place of the aldehyde. These diols are called alditols. Thus, glucose is reduced to glucitol (Figure 16.29), more commonly referred to as sorbitol. Sorbitol is less sweet than sucrose and is metabolized slowly (to fructose), so it is often used in sugar-free products, especially for diabetics. It occurs naturally in peaches, plums, apples, and pears. Since alditols do not contain a carbonyl group, they cannot cyclize and exist in the open-chain form. 

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