Sweetener In Food Industry

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Sugar has always been one of the most important fundamental food additives for many years. However, with the advancement of medical science numerous longitudinal studies have proven that over consumption sugar imposes serious risks to people’s health, among which diabetes and prevalence of overweight children and adults are the most dangerous one. Therefore, food scientists have always been trying to come up with new types of sweeteners to minimize the harmful effects of sugar. Sugar alternatives and substitutes such as Aspartame, Saccharin and Sucralose have long been used in the food and beverage industry. But the problem with most of these sweeteners is that they are artificial and unhealthy, as they’ve been scientifically documented to…show more content…
Consequently, finding sugar alternatives have become important for offering healthier food items. One of these sugar alternatives is Stevia and the use of stevia as a natural and plant-based sweetener is becoming increasingly common in the food and beverage industry. Stevia is a widely grown plant and is a natural sweetener without calories. It also can remain stable and durable in a different range of PH and heat; therefore, can be considered as an additive in food industry. The plants fresh leaves can be used as a sweetener to make hot or cold drinks or to be brewed for preparing herbal tea. Mitchel (1990) asserts that laboratory tests on carbonated beverages sweetened by stevia showed that rather than being heat and temperature resistant, “stevia extracts do not interact with other food components” (p. 68). In addition to being a natural and low calories sweetener, unlike other types of sweeteners, stevia does not have the short term or long term health ramifications on individuals, and this is an added privilege for those sugar-deprived patients such as diabetes or obese people who have been put on a sugar free diet by their therapists (Mohammadi, Majzoobi, Farahnaki, 2013). One of the so many applications of the plant is in making natural juice and popular artificial

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