A few months ago, my doctor said the words I had been dreading for so long. blood sugar level too high. My family history includes diabetes and occasional strong cravings for chocolate, so I knew this was coming and what it meant. I had to rely on sugar substitutes to satisfy my sweet tooth. Hmm.
Fake foods like aspartame, stevia, and sucralose (the main ingredient in Splenda) are sweet and have little or no calories, so they usually don’t spike blood sugar levels like the real thing. However, even though there are now more sugar alternatives than ever before, many people still have a taste for sugar. terrible. The aspartame in Diet Coke leaves a penny taste in your mouth. And substitutes are bad for you in large quantities: Last year, the World Health Organization warned Artificial sweeteners can increase the risk of certain diseases, and it named aspartame a “possible carcinogen.”
But last week I drank a can of Arnold Palmer with a brand new sweetener that promised to be completely different than anything else. The drink’s strong lemon flavor is mellowed out by a light, unobtrusive sweetness that comes from bratzein, a sugar substitute approved by the FDA last month. California-based Aubri, which sells iced lemonade tea and makes brazzein (naturally found in the West African Oburi fruit), touts it as a “revolution in sweetness.” But like everything that came before it, Brazzein is far from perfect. To mask that unpleasant taste, the cans also contained real sugar. Eric Walters, a sweetener expert at Rosalind Franklin University, told me that for now, bratzein is just an “alternative” to the many options that already exist. None of it comes close to the real thing.
The ideal sugar substitute isn’t just sweet; It must also be safe, taste good, and mimic the unique way sugar’s sweetness appears on the tongue. In addition to aspartame and other synthetic sugar alternatives that have existed for more than a century, the past 20 years have seen the emergence of plant-based “natural” sweeteners – sweeteners made from stevia and monk fruit. It was first approved by the FDA in 2008 and 2010 can now be easily found in beverages like Truly Hard Seltzer and Fairlife Protein Shakes. Stevia and monk fruit “have been used for hundreds of years by people who live in the areas where they are grown, so we don’t have much concern about their safety,” Walters said.
All of these sweeteners basically work the same way. Chemically, molecules other than sugar can also bind to sweet taste receptors on the tongue and send a signal to the brain that something sweet has arrived. But the brain realizes it’s not sugar. So far, no sweetener has achieved the trick. The unpleasant flavor that sometimes lingers always gives trickery.
The problem is that sugar substitutes are like celebrity impersonators. Aesthetically similar and reasonably satisfying, but always disappointing. Take stevia and monk fruit, for example. By weight, it is very sweet compared to table sugar. up to 250 and stevia with a coefficient of up to 400. Since only small quantities are needed to provide sweetness, these sweeteners must be bulked up with another substance to more closely resemble granulated sugar.Manufacturers used to add carbohydrates such as cornstarch (which eventually breaks down into sugars), but now erythritolIt’s a sugar alcohol with zero calories and “doesn’t count as sugar at all,” Walters says.
Although the final product looks and feels similar to sugar, it is not without its drawbacks. Erythritol is associated with an increased risk of: heart attack and stroke. And the stevia and monk fruit sweeteners come with an aftertaste that is described as:bitter,””unpleasant,” and “Miserable” When Walters first helped produce stevia 35 years ago, “I thought the taste quality was so bad that no one would buy it,” he said. “But we underestimated how much people would put up with it because it’s ‘natural.'”
Brazzein is another natural choice. Unlike other sugar substitutes, bratzein is a protein, but it’s still very sweet and low in calories. It’s so sweet (about 1,000 times sweeter than sugar) that some wild gorillas have learned it. Don’t waste your time eating it.that protein Although it’s become a health buzzword, it certainly doesn’t hurt Aubri’s sales, but the company’s products don’t build biceps. The company’s tea contains very little of it. 1 percent–Because Brazzein has a very strong sweetness.
Last month, Oubli received a “no questions asked” letter from the FDA. This means the FDA is not concerned about the safety of the product.Aubri’s iced tea and chocolate are the first sweetened products to be sold in the U.S., but the sweet protein has been identified 30 years ago. Thaumatin, another member of the sweet protein family, is 1970s, but is primarily used as a flavor enhancer. One of the reasons it took so long for bratzein to be commercialized is because its levels in the Aubri fruit were so low that mass production was inefficient. Rather than harvest brazzein from fruit, Aubri grows the protein in yeast cells, which is more scalable and affordable, said Aubri co-founder and chief technology officer. said Jason Rider.
One of the differences between bratzein and other sweeteners is its chemical size. Compared to sugar, stevia and monk fruit, brazein is a relatively large molecule because it is a protein, which means it is not metabolized in the same way, Ryder said. The effects of existing sweeteners on the body are still being studied.It is generally thought that it does not raise blood sugar levels or insulin, but recently the study It suggests that it might actually do so. Grant Dubois, a sweetener expert and chief scientific officer at stevia maker Almendra, told me that may not be a concern at all with Brazzein.
Brazzein’s most appealing advantage may be that it tastes pretty good. My taste buds, which are very sensitive to artificial sweeteners, didn’t find the taste unpleasant. Would you like to drink again?,I thought. However, the obvious caveat with Oubli tea is that it contains actual sugar. Just a little less than you would expect from a normal drink. Ryder says the sugar helps tone down brazzein’s sweet profile.
One of the persistent problems with bratzein and many other popular sugar substitutes is that the sweetness usually takes longer to develop and lingers longer than expected. Sure, I liked drinking Arnold Palmer while drinking, but afterwards I felt a unique sensation. The trace of sweetness in the back of my throat intensified, and when I exhaled it felt strangely cold. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it also felt like I had accidentally swallowed mint gum. If Diet Coke were made with brazein instead of aspartame, you’d taste the bitterness of caffeine and the sourness of phosphoric acid before the sweetness, and when all those flavors wore off, you’d be left with the sweetness. Walters explained. “It’s not the drink you want,” he said.
Brazzein’s balance with just a touch of sugar accomplishes the following goals: reduce Sugar intake. But in most cases, people who want products sweetened with sugar alternatives want “zero sugar,” “so that’s not really a good solution to the problem,” Dubois says. The perfect sweetener is one that completely replaces all of the sugar in foods, but Brazzein probably won’t get there unless it can fully address its sweetness specificity. “If you know how to do it, you can probably make millions of dollars,” Walters said.
The future of sugar substitutes may soon be about improvements rather than replacements. Last year, Dubois and Almendra’s colleagues published a peer-reviewed paper. paper The researchers describe how adding a pinch of mineral salt to the sweetener can speed up the slow onset of sweetness. This allows the sweetener to pass through the thick tongue mucus more quickly, resulting in a much improved sweet taste experience. “Not just stevia, but aspartame, sucralose, monk fruit. It goes really well with everything we’ve tried,” Dubois said, noting that perhaps bratzein also works. With the right technology, sweeteners can become “remarkably sugar-like,” he said.
But searching for the perfect sugar substitute is foolhardy. No single substance, no matter how good, is likely to satisfy all tastes and health expectations. As my colleague Amanda Mull wrote in the summer when aspartame was deemed carcinogenic, there’s always something. There is still much to learn about the health effects of natural sweeteners, and they may not be as natural as they seem. For example, some stevia products are chemically modified to improve their taste, Walters said.
Above all, sweeteners exist to allow people to indulge in sweet treats without worrying about the consequences. It can address most of your sugar problems, but not all of them. “Picking one sweetener and putting it in everything you eat and drink all day is probably not good for you,” Walters says. Sugar-free, perfectly sweet chocolate may come out someday, but I’ll probably never be able to eat it without dreading my next blood test.