Talk:Sugar substitute

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A summary of this article appears in sweetness.
Food Portal
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and drink, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of food and drink articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
B This article has been rated as B-class on the quality scale.
High This article has been rated as high-importance on the importance scale.
Sugar substitute was a good article, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these are addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake.

Delisted version: No date specified. To provide a date use: {{DelistedGA|insert date in any format here}}


Contents

[edit] Emotive/non-neutral? - aspartame

under "aspartame controversy", "Some research, often supported by companies producing artificial sweeteners, has failed to find any link between aspartame and cancer or other health problems." Suggest removal for unsupported/weaselly?

[edit] Natural sweeteners

e number is not known (of fructose) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.225.140.98 (talk) 18:00, 22 September 2007 (UTC) Why are xylitol and sorbitol listed under artificial sweeteners when they are natural? Xylitol is found in strawberries and other fruits? Carltonh 18:44, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've taken care of it. -- FP 02:20, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

They are natural, but produced via chemistry for human consumption. You will never found natural xylitol on the market as it is a rare sugar.

I was under the impression that aspartame was a natural sweetener, as it contains natural amino acids. Does it depend on each individual's definition of "natural", or is this just an "official" definition from the FDA?

I think its a combination of both. The FDA wants to know if its synthetic, which is good, because usually synthetics have isomers in them that can't be removed, and are not found in the natural forms. These can be really easy, or really hard to seperate, depending on the isomers, therefore you could have a lot, or a little of the isomer in the product. Isomers generally have different effects than each other, especially chiral isomers. Anyways, if its made in a plant, not extracted from one, its synthetic. Not that that's necessarilly bad.

[edit] Natural substitutes to sugar

I was looking for some information on substitutes to sugar, for health concerns (part not in the article, and going for anything refined). Completely natural substitutes to sugar aren't listed at all. Something not refined or at least very little. I was thinking especially honey, or dried fruit, or plant extracts ; stevia (syrup, leaves), agave syrup, birch syrup, maple syrup even malt (syrup, powder), and not forgetting raw sugars (palm sugar, beet sugar, cane sugar, molasses...). These sugars have the advantage of being less addictive, and they also contain other nutrients, the usual refined sugar doesn't. If there is an article containing that information I think it should be linked (maybe in the "See also"). Most of those being "alternative sweeteners". Pro bug catcher 13:12, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changes Deleted

Greetings,

I have been working on standardizing the list of sugar substitutes and noticed that many of my changes were deleted. By standardizing, I am refferring to deleting information that is in the child articles, noving certain information out of the list and into the child articles and coming up with a set amount of information that would be reasonable to see on a high level list. A working set of this information was:

For the Natural sugar substitutes I was using: Name of natural substitute, sweetness relative to sucrose, calories relative to sucrose, regulatory info (EU number, FDA status, warnings)

For the Artificial sugar substitutes I was using: Name of artificial sugar substitute, sweetness relative to sucrose, calories relative to sucrose, Company responsible, regulatory info (EU number, FDA status, warnings)

I was thinking of adding some type of subclassification (such as polyols, etc) to both lists.

In addition to trying to standardize the list, I was adding many entries that were not on the list. These have all now been deleted.

I have seen bits and pieces of this information scatter all over the Inet, but thought that it would be nice if one master list with standard attributes were available, so I thought of Wiki, and joined and started working on it.

I got one comment that said they liked what I was doing, and then alot of my changes were deleted by someone saying that I didn't justify the changes.

I want to continue to create this complete list that doesn't exist anywhere else, so I have copied the list prior to all the deletions and I am updating that copy on FrontPage on my PC.

Cheers,

Michael

I restored Michael's changes again. I can not see why they need to be deleted. In fact I think they are valuable information to anyone researching artificial sweeteners. Can the people who want to delete the info please explain why it must go? Let's work together and reach a consensus. -- FP <talk><edits> 09:07, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tables

I think the data is best displayed in tables. I have developed the tables below but they still need tweaking before going on the page.

[edit] Natural sugar substitutes

Name Sweetness
compared to sucrose (by mass)		 Energy content
compared to sucrose (by mass)		 E Number Warnings
Erythritol 0.7 0.05
Glycyrrhizin 50
Glycerol 0.6 1.075 E422
Hydrogenated starch hydrolysates 0.4 – 0.9 0.75
Isomalt 0.45 – 0.65 0.5 E963
Lactitol 0.4 0.5 E966
Maltitol 0.9 0.525 E965
Mannitol 0.5 0.4 E421
Sorbitol 0.6 0.65 E420
Stevia 250
Tagatose 0.92 0.38
Thaumatin 2000 E957
Xylitol 1.0 0.6 E967


Your table here, and your edits to the main article page, exhibit a gross misunderstanding of the numbers which used to appear here. What you should have is something along these lines

Name Sweetness compared to sucrose E Number Warnings
by mass by energy content
Erythritol 0.7 14

If you want to add energy density values, maybe

Name Sweetness compared to sucrose Energy density
MJ/kg		 E Number Warnings
by mass by energy content
Erythritol 0.7 14 0.85

or even

Name Sweetness compared to sucrose Energy density
compared to sucrose		 E Number Warnings
by mass by energy content
Erythritol 0.7 14 0.05


Gene Nygaard 13:26, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

Not guaranteeing I haven't made a gross error in calculating that 14 from 0.7/0.05, But as my brain processes it now it seems that this would be right if the 0.7 times as sweet as sucrose by mass and 0.05 times the food energy per unit of mass are correct. Gene Nygaard 13:40, 12 May 2005 (UTC)


I guess maybe I don't understand what the original numbers were in the list. What I think would be beneficial in this table to most people would be the two data metrics I see commonly talked about in relationship to sugar substitutes:

- How sweet the substance is relative to sugar

ie - isomalt has 45% to 65% the sweetness of sugar, so isomalt has 0.45x-0.65x the sweetness of sugar

- How do their calories compare with sugar?

ie - isomalt has 2.0 calories per gram and sugar has 4.0 calories per gram, so isomalt has 0.5x the calories as sugar

What were the meanings of the original numbers in the list?

Michael

It sure looked to me that they were saying that a gram of erythritol is 0.7 times as sweet as a gram of sucrose, but a quantity of erythritol with a kilojoule of food energy is 14 times as sweet as sucrose the amount of sucrose with a kilojoule of food energy. It is the latter measurement—which is the one you dropped—that people are likely to be most interested in. How many kilojoules or calories is it going to take to achieve the same sweetening that I would get using table sugar? Gene Nygaard 15:46, 12 May 2005 (UTC)
I see what you're getting at now. Just to be clear... you're not saying our table was factually incorrect in any significant way; rather it was just lacking some pertinent data, right? -- FP <talk><edits> 01:20, May 14, 2005 (UTC)
I'm saying that some of the factual information was dropped, and replaced with less useful information, because you two didn't understand that there are two different ways of comparing sweetness. I haven't even checked to see if the changed numbers agree with the old ones, in those few cases whre the old ones existed. Another problem is that many of the old numbers did not indicate the basis on which the sweetness was compared--there were only a few of them with both numbers. Gene Nygaard 01:36, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
I don't understand, what information was "dropped"? All I saw was Michael adding information on E-numbers and energy density. Ok, I see now. I actually do understand there are two ways of calculating sweetness, I just misunderstood what the problem was about - I assumed that Michael was adding information on sweetness by mass and now see that wasn't at all clear to other readers. -- FP <talk><edits> 04:48, May 14, 2005 (UTC)
No, the biggest problem isn't that it "wasn't at all clear to other readers". The problem is that it not only was not clear to Michael, but the article was messed up by Michael, whose intentions were good but who did not understand exactly what he was doing. Take a look at and compare these two, which were:
  • Xylitol — 1x (by weight), 1.5x (by energy content)
    Tagatose — 0.92x (by weight), 0.38x (by energy content)
and which are now
  • Tagatose — 0.92x sweetness, 0.38x calories
    Xylitol — 1.0x sweetness, 0.6x calories, E967
The first thing to notice is the missing prepositional phrase, "0.38x (by energy content)" changed to a noun in to "0.38x calories". I don't know for sure which is correct for tagatose; I'd guess that since User:Michaeljosephcleary is confused by this, that he is the one who is wrong.
It is clearer in the case of xylitol, where he did in fact change the number (maybe he did in both of them, and somebody changed one of them back again). Note that if the sweetness by weight is 1.0x and the sweetness by energy content is 1.5x sucrose, then the energy density of sylitol shold be 2/3 as much as sucrose, or about 0.67 times. If the 0.6x is a better number, say one that could be accurately stated as 0.60x the energy density of sucrose, then if xylitol is 1.0x the sweetness of sucrose by mass, it is 1.0/0.60 or about 1 2/3 times the sweetness by energy content.
Does this help you to see the problem?
Now I'm going to go fix the numbers. I gave User:Michaeljosephcleary an opportunity to do so, and he hasn't taken advantage of it. So I'll do it based on my best guesses as to what the numbers really are. Gene Nygaard 09:51, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

I have read the comments by Gene, and have been researching energy information regarding joule. Before anyone goes and starts recalculationg all of the valuse, lets agree on what data elements should be in the table.

Name Sweetness (relative to sucrose) expressed as n.nnx Energy (up for discussion) Regulation (EU and FDA status) Warnings (laxative effects, PKU, etc...)

I am not sure what numbers to put in Energy, other than mass based energy content expressed in both Calories and joules.

What other fields can you think of for the natural sugar substitutes?

Michaeljosephcleary 10:39, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Artificial sugar substitutes

Name Company Sweetness
compared to sucrose (by mass)		 Energy content
compared to sucrose (by mass)		 E Number FDA approval
Acesulfame Nutrinova 200 E950 Approved 2003
Alitame Pfizer 2000 Pending Approval
Aspartame NutraSweet 200 E951 Approved 1981
Cyclamate Abbott 30 E952 Banned 1969, pending reapproval
Dulcin 250 Banned 1950
Neohesperidine dihydrochalcone 1500 E959
Neotame NutraSweet 8000 Approved 2002
Saccharin E954 Approved 1958
Sucralose Tate & Lyle 600 Approved 1999

I like the idea of putting the data in a table. It looks better than in a simple list.

Sweetness and Energy are wasting alot of horizontal space, can the columnar headings be One word each, and then put a footnote after the table to describe the field contents in detail. Also, I am flexible in what the heading are (Sweet/Energy), but most people do not know that a calorie represents energy, so it should be somewhere in the footnote.

If space is freed, you can add an FDA column to the right of E-Number. Again, maybe the heading can be EU, with a footnote talking of EU E-Number and a date. I could see similiar info in the FDA field.

Thanks for your good work...

Also, the same fields in both tables should be the same width (as thin as possible to preserve space).

Once sized correctly, we can see if room is available to add another column and what that might be...

[edit] Move Request

Also, I think that I put in a move request from Acesulfame to Acesulfame potassium.

As it sits now, the name Acesulfame potassium has two links, one to Acesulfame and one to potassium. At this level it should be one link to Acesulfame potassium. Acesulfame potassium can link to potassium, if approiate.

Any comments?

There is a redirect in place. You can just link to Acesulfame potassium. -- FP <talk><edits> 01:08, May 14, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 2.4 Sucralose controversy

I added this section today with a few items in it. Feel free to nurture it...

[edit] Sugar substitutes - Working Table

Name RS kcal/g xxxx Regulatory Type Products
Inulin 0.1 1 Carbohydrate RAFTILINE(ORAFTI), Oliggo-Fiber™ Inulin(Cargill)
Hydrogenated starch hydrolysates 0.25–0.5 3 Sugar Alcohol Hystar(Associated British Foods/SPI Polyols)
Stachyose 0.28 Carbohydrate Xi'an Dapeng Biotechnology
Maltose 0.3 4 Malt Sugar
Galactose 0.3 4 Carbohydrate Cerebrose
Lactitol 0.3-0.4 2 E966 Sugar Alcohol LACTY(CSM/PURAC)
Isomalt 0.4 2 E953 Sugar Alcohol C*IsoMaltidex(Cargill/Cerestar), Palatinit®
Isomaltulose 0.42 Carbohydrate Palatinose(Shin Mitsui Sugar Co.)
Trehalose 0.45 Carbohydrate Ascend™ trehalose (Cargill)
Mannitol 0.5 1.6 E421 Sugar Alcohol C*Mannidex(Cargill/Cerestar), Mannogem(Associated British Foods/SPI Polyols)
Glycerol 0.55-0.75 4.3 E422 Sugar Alcohol
Sorbitol 0.6 2.6 E420 Sugar Alcohol C*Sorbidex(Cargill/Cerestar), SORBO/Sorbogem(Associated British Foods/SPI Polyols)
Erythritol 0.6-0.7 0.2 Sugar Alcohol C*Eridex(Cargill/Cerestar)
Tagatose 0.75-0.92 1.5 Carbohydrate Naturlose(Spherix/BioSpherix)
Maltitol 0.9 2.1 E965 Sugar Alcohol C*Maltidex(Cargill/Cerestar), Maltisweet(Associated British Foods/SPI Polyols)
Sucrose 1.0 4 Sugar
Xylitol 1.0 2.4 E967 Sugar Alcohol C*Xylidex(Cargill/Cerestar), Xylitol(CSM/PURAC)
Fructose 1.17 4 Fruit Sugar
Cyclamate 30-40 0 E952, FDA Banned 1969, pending re-approval Sulfamate Abbott
Glycyrrhizin 50-100 0 Glycoside Magnasweet (MAFCO WORLDWIDE CORPORATION)
Periandin V 90-100 Glycoside From the the rhizomes of Periandra dulcis L. (Leguminosae) (a.k.a Brazilian licorice)
Mabinlin 100 Protein Isolated from the bear fruit of Capparis Masaikai.
Aspartame 160-220 4 Discovered 1965, E951, FDA Approved 1981, Offpatent 1992 Dipeptide derivative Canderel,Equal,NutraSweet,Sweetex(Merisant)
Rubusoside 200 Glycoside Rubososide is extracted from the leaves of the Chinese Blackberry Bush (Rubus Suavissimus S. Lee).
Acesulfame potassium 200 0 E950, FDA Approved 2003 Sulfamate Nutrinova
Saccharin 200-700 0 E954, FDA Approved 1958 Sulfamate SweetMate,Sucaryl(Merisant)
Rebaudioside A 240-400 Glycoside From Stevia rebaudiana (Bertoni).
Stevia 250 Glycosides
Dulcin 250 FDA Banned 1950 Phenylurea
Mogroside V 250-425 Glycoside From Fruit of Lo Han Kuo (Momordica Grosvenori Swingle or Siraitia Grosveroni Swingle)
Phyllodulcin 300-400 CAS#480-46-6 Dihydroisocoumarin Isolated from the leaves of Hydrangea macrophylla Seringe var. thunbergii MAKINO
Aspartame-acesulfame salt 350-400 E962 Dipetptide sulfamate Twinsweet
Trilobatin 400-1000 Glycoside Dihydrochalcone glycoside from Symplococos paniculata Miq. (Simplocaceae), a.k.a. sweetleaf, sapphire berry, lodhra (Sanskrit) or ludh (Hindi).
Perillartin 400-2000 Glycoside Monoterpenoid from leaves, seeds and flowering tops of Perilla frutescens (L.) Britton (Labiatae) from India
Osladin 500 Steroidal Saponins From the fern of Polypodium vulgate L. (polypodiaceae)
Pentadin 500 Protein Isolated from fruit of Pentadiplandra brazzeana Baillon (Africa)
Curculin 550 Protein Isolated from the fruit of Curculigo latifolia (Malaysia)
Siamenoside I 563 Glycoside From Fruit of Lo Han Kuo (Momordica Grosvenori Swingle or Siraitia Grosveroni Swingle)
Sucralose 600 0 FDA Approved 1999 Sugar derivative Splenda(Johnson & Johnson/McNeil Nutritionals)
Neohesperidine dihydrochalcone 1,500 E959 Glycoside citrosa® (Exquim S.A.)
Alitame 2,000 Pending FDA Approval Dipeptide derivative Aclame(Pfizer)
Brazzein 500-2,000 Protein Isolated from the fruit of an African plant Pentadiplandra brazzeana Baillon
Monellin 1,500-3,000 Protein Bio Resources International
Thaumatin 1,600-3,000 E957, FDA-GRASS 3732 Protein Talin (Overseal)
P-4000 4,000 FDA Banned 1950 Nitroaniline
Neotame 8,000 0 FDA Approved 2002 Dipeptide derivative NutraSweet
Sucrooctate 162,000 Guanidine
Carrelame 200,000 Guanidine
Sucrononate 200,000 Guanidine
Bernadame 200,000 Guanidine
Lugduname 230,000 Guanidine
Miraculin sweet-inducing activity Glyco-protein Bio Resources International

RS is relative sweetness to sucrose (by weight)

  • Cyclamate, Dulcin, P-4000 — FDA Title 21, Subchapter B, Food For Human Consumption, Part 189 Substances Prohibited From Use In Human Food. [1]
  • Carrelame, Lugduname, Sucrononate, Sucrooctate — D. Glaser. Specialization and phyletic trends of sweetness reception in animals. Pure Appl. Chem., Vol. 74, No. 7, pp. 1153–1158, 2002. [2]
  • Protein — R. Kant. Sweet proteins – Potential replacement for artificial low calorie sweeteners. Nutrition Journal 2005, 4:5 doi:10.1186/1475-2891-4-5. [3]
  • Sugar Alcohol — Sugar Alcohols Fact Sheet. September 2004. International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation. [4]
  • Erythritol, Fructose, Glycerol, Isomalt, Lactitol, Maltitol, Maltose, Mannitol, Sorbitol, Sucrose, Xylitol — Polyol Comparison Chart [5]
  • Alternative Sweeteners, Third Edition. Lyn O’Brien Nabors (editor)
  • Taste Effectiveness in Kangaroos (Wallabia bicolor bicolor) to Various Compounds Sweet in Humans. D. Glaser, J.M. Tinti and C. Nofre. Abtract from "TOSTQ 7" Sweet Taste Conference Dijon 24th - 25th of September 2001. [6]

Products

  • Associated British Foods/SPI Polyols — Products [7]
  • Cargill/Cerestar — Products [8]
  • Cargill - Product [9]
  • Spherix/BioSpherix — Products [10] SEC 10-K [11]
  • CSM/PURAC — Products [12], Annual Report [13]
  • Johnson & Johnson/McNeil Nutritionals — Products [14], SEC 10-K [15]
  • Merisant — Products [16], SEC 10-K [17]
  • Pfizer — Products [18], SEC 10-K [19]
  • Bio Resources International, Inc [20]
  • Xi'an Dapeng Biotechnology [21]
  • Overseal [22]
  • Exquim [23]
  • ORAFTI [24]
  • MAFCO WORLDWIDE CORPORATION [25]

[edit] Woking Table Comments

Some suggestions, Michael
  • Make better use of the preview button, so that the history does not reflect all of your failed attempts to make the tables work. We all have to come back and correct ourselves now and then because we didn't get it right the first time, but it should not happen so many times in a row.
  • You need to explain all the acronyms used in your headers. What the heck is "RES"?
    • That includes explaining the basis of the comparison of sweetness, in the current version only by weight.
  • Why have you removed the sweetness by energy content information, something which was here for some of them even before you started editing? This is basically irrelevant, and should not be included, for high intensity sweeteners. But it is often the most relevant consideration in low intensity sweeteners.
  • You also need to explain your likely-to-confuse "kcal/g" units. This is not 1000 times the calories which are used in this context, which are the large calorie or kilogram calorie or food calorie. They are 1000 times a different, mostly obsolete small calorie or gram calorie which used to be used in chemistry and physics, and which has now been pretty much totally replaced by the joule in those contexts.
  • The table should also include kJ/g (or equivalent MJ/kg)
    • Calories are not part of the modern metric system, the International System of Units. They are not acceptable for use with the SI, either.
    • Joules are the primary units used in this context in some places such as Australia.
    • European nutrition labels also are required to include energy in joules.
  • Is this just a random ordering? Maybe you shoulg throw out your ideas about the order in which they should be listed for discussion here.
  • That's also true in a more general sense; since you still have this table on the Talk page as a suggestion, when you make changes in the way it is arranged, throw in a little comment telling us what you are doing any why, so that you can get some feedback as to the reasonableness of your thinking. That's the whole purpose of putting it on the talk page before putting it into the article, isn't it? Gene Nygaard 12:57, 20 May 2005 (UTC)


  • Gene, thanks for all of your input. I have been using the preview function, but based on how I go do research and then add some info to the web page I end up doing many small edits. Is there a way to delete the intermediate versions? I was going to do this building of the page in the sandbox, but that sounded like it would be deleted by the system at some point.
  • At some point all of the columns will be fully documented and actually contain data. :) The RES column is nothing, but could be the home of joules.
  • The table is sorted in ascending relative sweetness.
  • There are a few more natural sugars to add to the list, but I am holding off until I find good references.
  • As far as the kcal/g goes, from reading some information about it, kcal/g appears to be the same as Calories/g; but definetly to finalize the table, we need to finalize the column headings and the footnotes or explanations of the columns.
  • On a move forward, I have not been including sweetness by energy content, as from beeming around the inet, I usually only see relative sweetness to sucrose and calories. Basically, as sweeteners get sweeter, less sweetener is added to get the desired sweetness flavor, and more bulking agents might be added, if needed.
  • Here are the current columns: Name, RS, kcal/g, RES(Will become joules), Regulatory, Type and Products. Please think about changes to the columns and/or additional columns.

Michaeljosephcleary 16:47, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Yes, kcal/g is indeed the same as calories per gram. Very confusing; that's why it needs to be explained, if that's what you use. Note that the notion that the large calories are always written as "Calories" with a capital letter is the figment of the imagination of some authors of textbooks in some fields such as chemistry (where this particular flavor of calories, the large calorie family, hasn't been used to any extent in over half a century). It is not a generally followed practice. Note also that it is a useless convention of no utility whatsoever in contexts where it would be capitalized in any case. In particular, when "Calories" is used not just as a unit of measure, but also as a substitute for the quantity being measured, on some nutrition labels such as those common in the United States, it is the first word of a line in the table, capitalized just like "Sugars" and "Iron" are capitalized.
I don't understand the point about "RES" and "joules".
  • If you just mean to provide both joules per gram, and food calories per gram, then use the rowspan/colspan options in the table to group them together.
"Relative sweetness" needs to be disambiguated to show that you are talking about "relative sweetness by weight" even if you delete the information about "relative sweetness by energy content". In both cases, it is "relative to sucrose".
"Relevant sweetness by energy content" should not be deleted for low-intensity sweeteners. People want to know that achieving the same sweetness using sucrose as they get with a substitute will cost them the consumption of three times (or whatever) as much food energy in terms of joules or calories. This isn't important for high-intensity sweeteners, because zero is a sufficient approximation of the food energy added by the sweetener (any particular fillers used might change this, however, if you ever deal with particular formulations based on the sweeteners in that way). Gene Nygaard 14:56, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Article Reorganization

I like the idea of merging and removing all of the proposed articles.

I do believe that it would make more sense then to rename this article (Sugar_substitute) to Sweeteners, which would me more approiate.

Michaeljosephcleary 06:53, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Natural sugar substitutes vs. polyols

The way paragraph 5 is currently phrased makes it sound like naturally-occurring sweeteners like xylitol and sorbitol are not polyols. After listing xylitol as sorbitol as "natural sugar substitutes," in paragraph 5, polyols are called "another important group of non-sugar sweeteners" in paragraph 6. It is my understanding that xylitol and sorbitol are polyols. The polyol article lists them as polyols. I think this article should be clarified to state that xylitol and sorbitol are natural sugar substitutes AND polyols, but I wouldn't want to edit incorrectly. Is this accurate? JordeeBec 21:35, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Delisted GA

Hi. I have removed this article from the Wikipedia:Good article listing due to the following:

  • No references. One of the GA criteria is that a reference section must be provided. Inline citations are preferred but not required. When this issue has been addressed, please feel free to re-nominate. Thanks! Air.dance 04:06, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Zylatol

My girlfriend discovered a sweetener used in gum in S Korea called Zylatol. From what she heard Zylatol is good in most of the ways that sugar and artificial sweeteners are bad - helps teeth, helps cholesterol, better absorption (no blood sugar spikes), all natural and more.

Is this the sweetener in regular Trident? - http://ph.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070528094218AARMQDG Is Zylatol available as a powdered sweetener in other countries? Can we find enough information, especially scientific, to add this possible wonder sweetener to the list?

[edit] sweetness factors

Does anyone here know how the sweetness factors e.g. 250x for stevia are measured, actually?--ChainSuck-Jimmy 07:56, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Relative sweetness (RS) of sweet ingredients are evaluated against sucrose solution by expert panel. It can be evaluated on a weight basis or molar basis. Scientists will use the latest methodology, while product developers or supplier companies will do it by Weight. Basically you make sucrose solution at different concentration (e.g. 10, 20, 30, 40.. g/L) and compare them one by one to a solution containing stevia (or any other sweetener). For example 250x sweeter than sucrose on a weight basis means that the sweetness of 0.1g of stevia in 1 litre will be similar to 25 g of sugar in 1 litre. Beware that the relative sweetness can change with the sweetner concentration. Stevia is only 200 times sweeter than sucrose at higher level. The same apply for sucralose which is sometime 700 hundred times sweeter (at low concentration) and sometime 500 times when used at high concentration. It is for that it is commonly agreed to have an RS of 600. The other factor to take into account is the purity of the ingredients you assess. Sensonet 12:58, 24 October 2007 (UTC)