Sweeteners, artificial relative sweetness

Acquiring Information In a reference book, find a table comparing the relative sweetness of various sugars and artificial sweeteners. How do the following artificial sweeteners compare in sweetness with sucrose (table sugar) sucralose, aspartame, saccharin, and acesulfame-K ... 

The relative sweetness of a number of sugars and artificial sweeteners is given in Table 23.3. Somewhat lower thresholds than those given in Table 23.2 were obtained for sucrose (0 017 %), fructose (0 016 %), glucose (0-132 %), and lactose (0-0160%) when expressed as the concentration at which 50% of the responses correctly distinguished the sugar solution from a distilled water blank [23]. 

CHEMICAL CONNECTIONS 17A Relative Sweetness of Carbohydrate and Artificial Sweeteners... 

Table 25.2 Relative Sweetness of Some Carbohydrates and Artificial Sweetening Agents ...

Hydrolyzed starch products, such as maltodextrins, are produced by the partial hydrolysis of cereal (e.g., com) or root (such as potato) base starches and are commercially available in spray dried, particulate form. As manufactured it has a relatively low sweetness level and, if used alone as a sweetener, the food product can not be characterized as 100% artificially sweetened, a characterization that is often desired from a marketing standpoint. However, maltodextrins can be used as a bulking agent or carrier for synthetic sweeteners, such as aspartame, and then, the resulting product can be characterized as 100% artificially sweetened. 

Sucrose is produced in a high state of purity on an enormous scale—more than 80 million tons per year. About 40% of the world s sucrose production comes from sugar beets and 60% comes from sugarcane. A comparison of the sweetness of common sugars and artificial sweeteners relative to sucrose is given in Table 15.1. Honey, which is a mixture of the monosaccharides glucose and fructose, has been used for centuries as a natural sweetener for foods and is sweeter than sucrose, or cane sugar (Table 15.1). To convert cane... 

Among the disaccharide sweetening agents, D-fruc-tose tastes the sweetest—even sweeter than sucrose. The sweet taste of honey is due largely to D-fructose and D-glucose. Lactose has almost no sweetness and is sometimes added to foods as filler. Some people cannot tolerate lactose well, however, and should avoid these foods.The following table lists the sweetness of various carbohydrates and artificial sweeteners relative to that of sucrose ... 

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