The international market situation of sweeteners

According to the Food Additives Manual, Sweeteners are food additives that give food or feed a sweet taste. At present, there are many kinds of sweeteners, which can be divided into: according to its source, it can be divided into natural sweeteners and artificial sweeteners; According to its nutritional value, it can be divided into nutritive sweeteners and non-nutritive sweeteners. According to their chemical structure and properties are divided into sugar and non-sugar sweeteners.

Sugar substances such as glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose, starch sugar and lactose, although also natural sweeteners, but because of long-term consumption by people, and is an important nutrient, usually regarded as food raw materials, not as food additives in China.

Nutritional sweetener refers to a sweetener and sucrose sweetness at the same time, its calorific value is more than 2% of sucrose calorific value. Non-nutritive sweeteners are defined as having a caloric value less than 2% of sucrose.

Sweetening agent

Sweetening agent

Natural non-nutritional sweeteners are increasingly valued, is the development trend of sweeteners, WHO pointed out that diabetes patients have reached more than 50 million, more than a quarter of Americans require low-calorie food. Among sucrose substitutes, the United States mainly uses aspartame, which is more than 90%, Japan mainly uses stevia, and Europeans are more interested in AK sugar (acesulfonate). These three kinds of non-nutritional sweeteners can be used in China.

The main functions of sweeteners in food are as follows:

(1) Taste: sweetness is one of the indicators of many foods, in order to make food and drinks have a palpable feeling, you need to add a certain amount of sweetener.

(2) The adjustment and enhancement of flavor, which generally requires sweetness in pastry; In beverages, the adjustment of flavor has a “sugar-acid ratio”. Sweeteners can make the product get a good flavor, but also can retain the fresh taste.

(3) The formation of flavor, sweetness and the flavor of many foods are complementary to each other, and the taste of many products is produced by the combination of flavor substances and sweeteners, so many foods are added sweeteners.