Monday, July 23, 2007

Low Calorie Sweeteners


When we think about developing healthier sustainable eating strategies, otherwise known as dieting, one of the first areas where we try to cut calories, is reducing our intake of sweets. One way to take a step in the right direction is to take stock of what we keep on hand, at our immediate disposal, and find suitable alternatives.

Low calorie sweeteners are similar to sugar (fructose) but offer more intensity. Therefore, a little goes a long way toward achieving the desired taste, while adding only a negligible amount of calories. These sweeteners have FDA approval to be used in the United States:
Acefultame Potassium( Ace-K) was approved in 1988 and is 200 times sweeter than sugar; sold as Sunett and Sweet One.
Aspartame was approved in 1981, is 180 times sweeter and found in Nutra Sweet and Equal brands among others.
Saccharin has been around longer than any of the others and was first discovered in 1878. Once a suspected carcinogen, Saccharin no longer requires a warning label, as a result of subsequent findings by the NIH and legislation enacted in 2001. Saccharin is marketed as SweetnLo,Sweet Twin and Sugar Twin and is 300 times sweeter than sugar.
Sucralose was approved in 1998, shown to be 600 times sweeter, and is branded as Splenda.
Neotame is newest general purpose sweetener to receive approval in the U.S. as well as other countries. It is the most intense to date, being 7000 sweeter than sugar. It was approved in 2002. I have no brand names associated with this product at this time.

Low calorie sweeteners can be a big help to those of us concerned with caloric intake, carbohydrate management, or living with diabetes. For more information about scientific studies and safety evaluations, I would urge anyone interested, to avail themselves of information available online from the USDA, ADA, and the International Food Information Council Foundation which is linked to the title of this post.

1 comment:

Dr.K.G.Bhat,M.B:B.S said...

artificial sweeteners are very dangerous,there is no reason why you should not eat sugar.if you can not burn what you eat don't blame sugar.sugar should be avoided by diabetics and that is that.