With the improvement of public health awareness and the popularization of nutritional knowledge, the concept of "eating too much sugar is not conducive to health" has been deeply rooted in people's mind, and "less sugar" has become one of the basic principles of healthy diet. "Sugar-free food" has become a major direction of healthy diet.
However, it is human's natural taste preference to like "sweetness". Many people talk about health verbally, but choose sweetness in action. Making "sugar-free food" is not difficult, but "sugar-free and sweet" is the real demand of consumers.
Sweeteners have been used since the nineteenth century.
Since the appearance of saccharin in the late nineteenth century, sweeteners with sweetness rather than sugar have been quietly gaining more support in criticism and questioning. With the development of more than one hundred years, there are many kinds of sweeteners on the market - synthetic sweeteners, natural sweeteners, high sweetness sweeteners, cheap sweeteners and abundant sweeteners, pure sweeteners and bitter aftertaste sweeteners.
For beverage foods, these "high sweetness, no calorie" sweeteners have achieved great success. But in baked foods such as mooncakes, their space is limited. The reason is that sugar not only provides sweetness in these foods, but also combines moisture, increases consistency, and even reacts with amino acids in Maillard's way. High sweeteners can only solve the problem of sweetness, but they can't do anything about it. If they are used, the taste of these foods will be greatly affected.
What exactly is maltitol in sugar-free moon cakes?
In recent years, "sugar-free moon cakes" have become more and more popular, but the taste and mouth-feel seem not to be affected much. From the ingredient list and nutrition label, we can see that they do not contain sugar, but something like "maltitol" appears.
What on earth is maltitol?
Chemically, "sugar" refers to "polyhydroxy aldehydes or ketones". The characteristic group of aldehydes and ketones is a carbonyl group, which can be added with a hydrogen atom to become "alcohol". So the "alcohol" from sugar is called "sugar alcohol".
Maltitol is obtained by hydrogenation and reduction of maltose. In production, it hydrolyzes starch into maltose syrup, and then reacts with hydrogen under the action of catalyst to obtain maltitol.
Catalytic hydrogenation is a "chemical reaction", so sugar alcohols have different origins from traditional "natural products"; but after all, they come from starch, and are also distinctly different from pure "chemical synthesis products" such as saccharin, aspartame and cyclamate. If it had to be labeled "natural" or "synthetic", there would be a lot of controversy.
Maltitol is sweeter than maltose, but not as sweet as sucrose. The adverse effects of sugar on health are mainly due to a series of physiological reactions such as changes in insulin caused by digestion and absorption. Maltitol is absorbed in a very low proportion and has a much smaller impact on blood sugar than sucrose, so the American Diabetes Association points out that sugar alcohol foods are good for controlling blood sugar. They will not be fermented by bacteria in the mouth and will not cause dental caries.
In addition to low digestibility and absorption, the metabolic calories of the absorbed glycols are much lower than those of the same amount or sweetness. China's national standards stipulate that the calorific value of sugar alcohols is calculated according to "10 kJ/g". This calorific value is slightly higher than "8 kJ/g" of fibers and much lower than "17 kJ/g" of sugar and starch. The special erythritol is calculated according to 0 calories. Compared with sugar, sugar alcohols are more friendly to weight control when they satisfy people's appetite.
Although it is no longer sugar, it still retains water, thickens and fills in food. These characteristics make sugar alcohols a good substitute for sugar in pastries, ice cream and other foods.
The calorific value of "sugar alcohol" itself can not be neglected
It should be emphasized that sugar alcohols are not as calorie-free as other highly effective sweeteners. Because the sweetness is not high, their use in food is relatively large, and the heat generated can not be ignored. In other words, they are "much better than sucrose" in terms of calories and blood sugar, not "no effect". In addition, consuming large amounts of sugar alcohol can lead to diarrhea --- fortunately, the "large" number is a bit large, about 90 grams of maltitol per day for adults. Normally, people may not eat so much.
