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With continuing supply chain issues and consumers increasingly looking for products offering reduced or zero sugar, manufacturers are searching for ways to keep the sweetness without sacrificing taste or mouthfeel. Renee Leber, manager for food science and technical services at the Institute for Food Technologies (IFT) explores innovative methods and ingredients to reduce sugar content in candy, chocolate and other confections.

Consumer health concerns...sugar supply shortages...the popularity of low-carb diets like keto and paleo. There are many reasons manufacturers are looking to create sugar-free products – and a projected global market of $23 billion in 2028 only sweetens the deal. For those looking to enter this growing market, there are a variety of innovative sugar reduction methods ready to be explored.

Artificial vs natural sugar

While artificial sweeteners like aspartame, sucralose and saccharin are popular inclusions in sugar-free formulations, they each have sensory limitations.

Aspartame has a longer peak sweetness than sugar, which some consumers may not enjoy. Similarly, sucralose’s peak sweetness diminishes more slowly than sucrose, which can leave an undesirable residual sweet taste. Saccharin is associated with a bitter taste in sensory testing.

One relatively recent artificial sweetener that shows promise is neotame, considered by some to be the successor to aspartame. Approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2002, neotame performs well in sensory testing, with most citing no or little bitter off-tastes (though one study found a liquorice note at high concentrations).

Neotame has been successfully substituted for 20% to 30% of sugar in soda with no taste difference. Advantame, which was approved by the FDA in 2014, is 37,000 times more potent than sucrose and can be used to enhance vanilla and fruit flavours at low concentrations.

A sugar by any other name

Recently, several naturally occurring sucrose alternatives have come to the forefront of the sugar replacement conversation.

Rare sugars – sugars that occur in minimal quantities in nature – may be a desirable alternative to table sugar as they tend to be lower in calories than sucrose and limited in off-flavours. They also have similar browning, bulking and mouthfeel qualities as sucrose. These sugars can be found in a variety of foods, including raisins, figs and wheat. For example, allulose is 70% as sweet as table sugar but only contains 10% of the calories, while tagatose is 90% as sweet with 30% of the calories.

While rare sugars offer numerous attractive qualities, the major challenge to including them in formulations is extracting them in bulk. As they are only present in specific foods in limited amounts, extracting enough to use in production is both economically difficult and environmentally unsustainable. Better methods of production must be identified before rare sugars can be considered for wide use as natural sugar alternatives.

Two other natural sugar substitutes that have caught the eye of researchers are rebaudiosides M and D (Reb M and Reb D). Both are stevia glycosides (SvGls) derived from Stevia rebaudiana, which is used to make the popular nonnutritive natural sugar substitute stevia. Stevia is often sourced from the SvGls stevioside and rebaudioside A, which are abundant in stevia leaves.

However, both produce a bitter taste. Reb M has been identified as a 'next generation' SvGl due to its lower level of bitter aftertaste in comparison with Reb A. Reb D, which has the highest potency of sweetness in comparison to other rebaudiosides, is also less bitter than Reb A. Similarly to rare sugars, production of Reb M and Reb D is cost prohibitive due to their low concentrations in stevia leaves, and more research is needed to improve efficiency (though there are alternative ways to produce and synthesise SyGls).

Innovations in chocolate

Beyond general research on artificial and natural sugar substitutes, researchers have also identified innovative strategies for reducing sugar in chocolate. Penn State researchers documented in IFT’s Journal of Food Science that replacing up to 25% of the sugar content in chocolate with oat or sweet rice flour yielded no significant difference from the control chocolate. While the rice flour did create an undesirable gritty texture, the chocolate made with oat flour had a smooth texture and was ranked above the rice flour version and the control for 'sweetness liking'.

Conching, “a mechanical treatment of the chocolate mass in large containers fitted with rollers, paddles, or a variety of other devices,” can also alter the perception of chocolate sweetness. Researchers identified that raising the temperature in a 12-hour conching cycle by 10°C increased the perception of sweetness in milk chocolate; however, this also decreased the perception of other desirable attributes like milkiness. More research into conching is necessary to fully understand the potential benefits when it comes to sugar reduction.

Sugar substitutes and reduction continues to be a big talking point, with the keynote at this year’s IFT First: Annual Event and Expo titled Reimagining Flavour: Reducing fat, salt and sugar for healthier foods, which explored the latest research, strategies and innovations in reducing sugar, salt and unhealthy fats while still maintaining taste and consumer satisfaction.