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Sweetening Without Sugar Living Well with Diabetes Sweetening without Sugar Whether you are watching your weight or Sugar substitutes work best in foods that rely managing your diabetes or just trying to eat a on other ingredients for volume, moistness or balanced diet, one of the main ways to texture. Alternative sweeteners substitute well monitor your carbohydrate intake is to limit in recipes for beverages, puddings, salad the amount of added sugars in your diet. dressings, sauces, pies, and frozen desserts. There are several sugar substitutes available Using sugar substitutes in cakes and cookies that can help you cut back on sugar intake. is usually less successful. Also some sugar Some sugar substitutes will not affect blood substitutes tend to taste better in recipes with glucose levels and some may have a small acidic ingredients like fruit or yogurt. All sugar effect. The following information is for substitutes are sweeter when they are educational purposes only. Mention of combined with other sweeteners. For specific products does not constitute example, one packet of saccharin and one endorsement. packet of aspartame in a recipe will be sweeter than two packets of aspartame. Sugar substitutes are grouped into two categories: non-nutritive sweeteners which provide no calories, and nutritive sweeteners Non-nutritive Sweeteners which provide some calories. Non-nutritive sweeteners are also known as All sugar substitutes on the market in the US intense sweeteners and are calorie-free. They are considered Generally Recognized as are so intensely sweet that only a very small Safe (GRAS) or approved as food additives amount is needed to sweeten food. Examples by the Food and Drug Administration. They include: are given an Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) • Saccharin which is the amount a person can safely • Aspartame consume every day over a lifetime without • Acesulfame-K appreciable risk. The ADI is determined by • Sucralose review of all available safety and toxicological • Neotame data on individual food additives. Substituting sugar alternatives in favorite Saccharin desserts can be frustrating because no Saccharin is the oldest sugar substitute. In artificial sweetener has all the properties of 1977, the Food and Drug Administration sugar. Sugar not only sweetens a food but petitioned to have saccharin banned because also provides volume, texture, color, and some research showed it might cause cancer moistness in many recipes. Many sugar in rats. Since increased rates of cancer in substitutes on the market cannot be humans who use saccharin has never been substituted for sugar in equivalent amounts proven, the FDA withdrew its request to have because they are from 200 to 13,000 times saccharin banned in 1991. sweeter than sugar. Even granulated versions of the sugar substitutes cannot provide the Sweet’n Low is probably the best known same volume, texture and moistness of brand of saccharin. Other brands include regular sugar. Sweet Twin, Sweet’n Low Brown, Sugar Twin University of Arkansas, United States Department of Agriculture and County Governments Cooperating The Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service offers its programs to all eligible persons regardless of race, color, national origin, religion, gender, age, disability, marital or veteran status, or any other legally protected status, and is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. and Necta Sweet. In addition to being a and beverages in 1996. It is 200 times tabletop sweetener, saccharin can be used in sweeter than sugar and produces a very cooking and baking. Unfortunately, it does limited rise in blood sugar. Aspartame has an have a strong aftertaste when used in large ADI of 50 mg/kg body weight and is amounts. considered safe for the general public. One packet of Sweet’nLow Aspartame, marketed for years as Equal, is has the equivalent now available under other brand names and sweetness of two mixed with other sweeteners. Aspartame is teaspoons of sugar, but as also marketed in a granulated form called the amount of sugar it is to Nutrasweet replace increases, the Spoonfuls and in amount of Sweet’n Low pouches for needed decreases. Since saccharin is 300 measuring out larger times sweeter than sugar, you need less as quantities called you use larger amounts to get the equivalent Equal Measure. sweet taste of sugar. Also, as more saccharin Other brand names is used, bitterness increases. include: Nutrataste and InstaSweet. The Sweet’n Low Company recommends that you not add more than 12 packets of Aspartame has no aftertaste for most people saccharin initially to any recipe. They suggest but loses its sweetness whenever it is stored that after 12 packets are used, you should for a long period of time in liquid or when it is slowly add more packets of saccharin to the heated for more than 15 minutes. Combining food until the desired sweetness is achieved. it with another sweetener or using it with an This will produce the least bitter aftertaste. acidic food like citrus fruit or yogurt helps Adding a little vinegar or other acidic retain its sweetness. Equal Sugar Light is a ingredient to a dish can sometimes reduce combination of sugar and Equal and can be the aftertaste. used in most recipes. It yields a lower-calorie, lower-carbohydrate product than one made The Sweet’n Low Company also recommends with straight sugar. In some cases, you may that if you totally replace sugar with their wish to sprinkle aspartame over a dessert like product in baked goods, that you reduce your a cobbler or pie after it is cooked to get the dry ingredients by 25% and add a little fruit maximum sweetness rather than mixing it in juice or 2 egg whites for moistness. before it is cooked. Saccharin is also combined with aspartame in Notice that since aspartame has no aftertaste a product called Sugar Twin Plus which helps and is only 200 times sweeter than sugar, you reduce saccharin's aftertaste while enhancing replace the amount of sugar in a recipe with the sweetness of the aspartame. Regular the expected proportion of aspartame. You do Sugar Twin is a granulated product that is not use less aspartame as the amount substituted 1 teaspoon of Sugar Twin for needed to replace sugar goes up. each teaspoon of sugar. However, you may wish to use less Sugar Twin when replacing larger amounts of sugar in a recipe. Acesulfame-K Acesulfame-K was approved as a tabletop Aspartame sweetener and for use in several food categories in 1988. In was approved as a Aspartame was approved as a tabletop general purpose sweetener in 2003. It has an sweetener in 1981 and for use in all foods ADI of 15 mg/kg body weight. Neotame is made from the same basic Acesulfame-K is 200 times sweeter than ingredients as aspartame and is 7,000 - sugar. It has a slight aftertaste when used in 13,000 times sweeter than sugar. It is partially large amounts. Acesulfame-K can withstand absorbed and rapidly metabolized. It does not high cooking temperatures significantly affect blood sugar. The ADI is so it can be used in cooking 2mg/kg body weight. and baking. Again, like saccharin, as you replace Neotame can be used for baking but it cannot larger amounts of sugar with be substituted cup-for-cup. It is often blended larger amounts of with sugar for use in commercially prepared acesulfame-K, less is baked foods. needed. Any time you use large amounts of saccharin or acesulfame-K Nutritive Sweeteners Sugar Alcohols in a recipe, you will need to experiment to find the right amount to use. Acesulfame-K is (Polyol) marketed as Sweet One, Sweet-n-Safe and Sunette. Two polyol products have recently become available to consumers. They are typically less sweet than sugar and provide fewer Sucralose calories. They provide bulk in foods like sugar and are often combined with non-nutritive Sucralose is made by combining sugar with sweeteners in food products. Polyols provide chlorine to create a calorie-free substance approximately two calories per gram (half as that is 600 times sweeter than sugar. It is not much as regular sugar) and do not raise metabolized by the body and does not raise blood sugar levels as much as sugar. blood sugar. It has an ADI of 15 mg/kg body Because they are not fully absorbed, they can weight. Sucralose is heat stable so it can be cause gastrointestinal distress and have a used in cooking and baking. laxative effect when consumed in excessive amounts. Splenda is the most familiar brand of sucralose XyloSweet and comes in two baking-friendly XyloSweet is 100% xylitol. varieties: Splenda Xylitol is approved as a food Sugar Blend for Baking and Splenda Brown additive by the FDA. Sugar Blend. Both blends combine sucralose According to the and sugar, provide half the calories and manufacturer, corn cobs carbohydrates as straight sugar and are and birch trees are the main better for baking than pure Splenda alone. sources for commercially produced xylitol. When baking with Splenda blends, substitute Xylosweet tastes as sweet as table sugar, but one half cup of Spenda blend for every one has 10 calories per teaspoon instead of 16 cup of sugar called for in the recipe. calories per teaspoon. It has a low glycemic index, so does not affect blood glucose as much as sugar. Xylosweet is interchangeable Neotame with sugar in most recipes. However, it will not work in yeast breads since yeast cannot Neotame is the newest sweetener on the metabolize it. It does not crystallize like sugar market. It was approved for use as a general so will not work well when making peanut purpose sweetener in 2002 and is manu- brittle or hard candy.
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