The available sweeteners

A large number of sweet-tasting substances has been described in the scientific literature, most of them in the course of the last 20 to 30 years. The number of substances having an intense sweetness is by far higher than the number of products with a sweetening power similar to sucrose which could therefore be used as bulking sugar substitutes. Only a small number of these has found 

The available intense sweeteners belong to very different structural classes of sweeteners (Table 10.1). They were normally discovered by chance. All internationally important sweeteners are produced synthetically and only two less important products are isolated from plants. 

A variety of bulk sweeteners is now available (Table 10.2). They belong to the class of sugar alcohols. Some monosaccharide alcohols have been used for decades, and disaccharide alcohols have broadened the range of available functional characteristics. 

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