In 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted a shift in consumer interest away from artificial high-intensity sweeteners and toward more natural alternatives. The organization cited safety concerns as well as potential toxicity concerns because of the negative impact some artificial sweeteners could have under environmental degradation. More than that, however, consumer demand was continuing to rise—not
only for “better for you” products, but also for better tasting, cleaner label foods and beverages.

For a sweetener, the perception of sweetness relies on how it works in formulation, how it is metabolized in the mouth, and how it binds with receptors on the tongue. Different sweeteners bind with different binding sites and the challenge of making a food or beverage “perfectly sweet” can be as much of a moving target as is the definition of “clean label.” Here are some tips and insights into using the currently popular sugar-reduction ingredients that can help processors hit the sweet spot.

New Sweet Kids

The near-zero-calorie sugar allulose, (sometimes referred to as d-allulose, psicose, or d-psicose) continues to be in the spotlight for its surprisingly clean flavor and versatility, as well as its nonglycemic qualities and ease of application. It also is favored as a reducing sugar, contributing to Maillard browning and caramelization in bakery applications. This naturally occurring “rare” sugar has undergone a price drop as technology for extracting it from corn, beets, and other plants has improved.

Allulose has an upfront sweetness onset similar to sucrose. While it can stand alone as a one-to-one substitute for sucrose, fructose, or glucose, it currently is still confined to an original GRAS limit of 30g/day. It provides excellent synergies when combined with high-intensity sweeteners and is suitable for a variety of beverage categories, including juices and soft drinks, even under high-heat processing conditions.

With greater hygroscopicity than sucrose, allulose can be used in base mixes for frozen dairy and non-dairy frozen desserts, such as scoopable ice-creams, gelato, and coated frozen confections and bars, at a maximum of 5% by weight. This maximum is recommended for guidance based on a presumed ingestion rate of allulose from an average serving of frozen desserts.

Sugars are hygroscopic, and so are attracted to—and bind well with—water. As such, they contribute desirable attributes such as maintaining softness in cookies and other baked goods. For foods optimized with brown sugars of any type, the caramel notes and moisture from molasses are impossible to replace with any low- or non-nutritive, high-intensity option. Light and dark brown sugars, with molasses ranging from about 3-6%, contribute distinctive caramel notes and color, as well as moisture.

Some low-viscosity glucose syrups, with 25% less sugar than a reference 42 or 63 dextrose equivalents (DE) corn syrup, can reduce total sugars while retaining existing standardized formulations. Viscosity is a consideration where more viscous options can cause production issues. Low-sweetness corn syrup products can still be labeled “corn syrup” and are manufactured using only partial hydrolysis of corn starch to dextrose, with no conversion of dextrose to fructose. Often, these ingredients are used more for their water-binding capacity than for sweetness.

Protein-based thaumatin, considered 100,000 times sweeter than sucrose, is caloric but contributes negligible calories because a tiny amount packs a big sweet punch. It is stable at boiling temperature at a pH below 5.5 for up to an hour, as well as during thermal processing such as pasteurization and canning in pH environments below 7.0. Thaumatin is hailed as both a low-calorie sweetener and a flavor modifier for many product categories, including chewing gum, dairy, pet foods, and animal feed. It masks bitterness and other objectionable notes when blended with high-intensity sweeteners, despite its own licorice-like linger.

The recent trend in biomanufacturing of ingredients, receiving a lot of attention lately for the production of meat, seafood, and dairy proteins recently added sweeteners into the mix. A Swedish technology company has successfully used non-cell-based enzyme technology to produce the rare sugar kojibiose, occurring in trace amounts in the caramelization of sugar and found naturally in honey. It is a mildly sweet sugar with the unusual characteristic of being a prebiotic disaccharide, and thus helping to support digestive health.

Kojibiose was previously hard to synthesize, not to mention expensive. But the new enzyme technology makes possible high-volume, comparatively low-cost production of the novel ingredient possible. As such technologies are expanded and applied to other sweetener sources, more clean-label sugar-reduction options should continue to become available. PF