10 - Developments in sweeteners

Abstract

Publisher Summary Sucrose is the most important sweet-tasting food ingredient with annual world production in excess of 100 million tons. However, its importance to the food industry is a consequence of many factors in addition to an ability to deliver a clean sweetness that is devoid of aftertastes or side-tastes. Developments in sweeteners have been covered extensively in the recent book “Optimising Sweet Taste in Foods.” The book includes chapters giving overviews of well-known sweeteners, such as sucrose, low-calorie potent sweeteners, reduced-calorie sweeteners, and polyols. This chapter reviews only those sweeteners that have been described most recently in the literature and that are not yet widely used commercially. Some or all of these novel sweeteners will, in time, become important additional tools in the armory of sweet ingredients for use by the food and beverage industries. The chapter mentions that there is a sound rationale for identifying and developing compounds that potentiate sweetness. An effective sweetness potentiator might generate sweetness economically, taste quality improvements might be anticipated and there are perceived marketing benefits consequent on reducing or eliminating the use of “artificial” sweetener ingredients.