The Study and Challenge of Producing Sugar Substitutes via Microorganism Pathway

Abstract

Nowadays, the ratio of obesity increases continually because of excessive sugar intake with the improvement of living standards, especially for children and teenagers. The obesity, caused by excessive sugar intake, is a main risk to induce cardiovascular disease both in adults and children because of abnormal glucose tolerance, such as hypertension, atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease. Consequently, it’s important to find an effective method to limiting sugar intake, which are welcomed by sweet person, reducing onset of higher sugar intake associated diseases, contains optimistic business opportunities. Therefore, the research and development of sugar alternative products grew rapidly and soon occupied an important position in the market. In comparison with artificial sweeteners, erythritol, as a natural sugar substitutes (NSS), is widely used in good industry to add sweet tastes. But producing erythritol faces problems. One of the main problems is using erythritol is far more expensive by using traditional sugar, like sucrose and fructose. In order to solve this problem, scientists suggest to replace glucose by glycerol. At the same time, change the environment of bacterium or fungi greatly influence the efficiency. In this review, the author aims to summarize the production of erythritol, compare its advantages and limitations, and provide some references for its development as an important sugar substitute in future.