Abstract
Information on food composition is of great importance for scientists and professionals working in the fields of nutrition and public health. The most apparent role of food composition is to provide the basis for dietary assessment and the formulation of healthier diets. Ready meals and food served in canteens are increasingly included in this approach considering their contribution to daily nutrition. There have been no studies that presented the nutritional values of some traditional Syrian sweets. This study was the first study to shed some lights about the nutritional facts of the traditional Syrian sweets. Seventeen different traditional Syrian sweets both regular calorie content (regular where sucrose was used as sweetener) and reduced calorie content (diet as Aspartame sweetener was used) were analyzed for Moisture, Ash, Carbohydrates, Protein and Fat content and finally calorie density per 100 g was calculated. The study also measured the calorie content of few sweets which we did not find diet ones similar to them. The results have shown that Syrian sweets in general are very calorie dense foods due to their high content of sugar, fat and other sweeteners such as honey and (high fructose corn Syrup (HFCS). The calorie density ranges from 347.5 Kcal to 516.2 Kcal/ 100 g serving for diet sweets and 372.8 Kcal to 532.2 Kcal/100 g serving for regular sweets. Protein ranged from 5.6 g to 18.4 g and fat from 5.5 to 29.8 g/100 g serving.
Highlights
Knowledge of the nutrient content of foods is essential for many types of nutrition research and applied nutrition projects, including the interpretation of food consumption studies, the nutritional assessment of food supplies, and the planning of nutritionally adequate diets
The highest fat content of the sweet was in Nut and Pistachio Mamouls followed by Bokaj, Awameh and Kunafeh Nabulsiah
The results obtained from this study are not conclusive because in every region of Syria, there are some variations in the recipes during preparation of the sweets. These variations are reflected in the nutritive value of such sweets and their calorie content
Summary
Knowledge of the nutrient content of foods is essential for many types of nutrition research and applied nutrition projects, including the interpretation of food consumption studies, the nutritional assessment of food supplies, and the planning of nutritionally adequate diets. Data on potentially harmful food components such as pesticides, contaminants or by-products of food processing, such as trans-fatty acids or acrylamide, are important when making nutritional recommendations, providing the basis for the estimation of exposure and risk assessment [14]. They provide the basis for recipe reformulation and modifications of production methods aimed at reducing the amount present in food [15]. This data, based on the sweetness equivalence to sucrose, highlight the trend of the sweetener market [21]
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