Can you Deceive your Sweet Tooth? Yes, you can !!!

Individuals with diabetes need to know the carbohydrate content to determine appropriate portion size It is a concern when the carbohydrate content of food labels is not accurate. Those on insulin pumps or giving themselves insulin several times a day by injection base the amount of insulin on the amount of carbohydrates the food contains. If the amount in the food is actually higher, then their blood sugars may go above desirable limits. Therefore, it becomes imperative to find sugars substitutes which one one hand will provide the much desired sweet taste but not add calories. This is the reason why there are several products available today to make life a little more happier for the diabetics. These are the sugar substitutes. There are a variety of sugar substitutes available in the market. Here are some of them that can be used instead of sugar.

1.Nutritive sweeteners

1. Hydrogenated Starch Hydrolysates: Hydrogenated starch hydrolysates (HSH) are a family of products found in a wide variety of foods. Included in this group are some glucose syrups, maltitol syrups, and sorbitol syrups. They are created by breaking down starch found in corn. HSH are used in candy, baked goods and mouthwashes because they don't crystallize. HSH sweetness varies between 40% to 90% of the sweetness of sugar.
2. Sugar alcohols: The sugar alcohols are examples of nutritive sweeteners or sweeteners that contain calories. Two other common nutritive sweeteners are aspartame and sucralose (Splenda®). These don’t add calories but are more sweeter than table sugar that the calories you consume are almost negligible.
   
   Aspartame, often seen marketed under the brand name "NutraSweet®", is 180 times as sweet as table sugar. It's actually a protein, since it's made by combining two amino acids: phenylalanine and aspartic acid. These two amino acids are found naturally in all foods containing protein. There is an inherited metabolic disorder called PKU (phenylketonuria) in which the enzyme is missing that normally allows the amino acid phenylalanine to convert to another amino acid, tyrosine. If this conversion doesn't occur, phenylalanine levels increase and cause mental retardation. All babies are tested for PKU and, if diagnosed, are placed on a low phenylalanine diet. This special low protein diet allows infants to have normal brain development. It's because of this relatively rare disorder that a warning is on the label of foods containing aspartame. Example wording on a diet soda is "Phenylketonurics: contains phenylalanine".
3. Sucralose: spenda is the market name of this sugar substitute, a substance that is 600 times sweeter than sugar but can't be digested, so it adds no calories to food. It was approved in 1998 as a tabletop sweetener and for use in some products like baked goods and fruit juices. It was later approved as a general-purpose sweetener for all foods.
4. Fructose: It is found in table sugar. It is the sugar responsible for the sweet taste of fruit. Fructose is sold as a sweetening agent. Because it's a carbohydrate it contains 4 calories per gram, but since it's a little sweeter than sugar, it is used less thus not adding calories.
5. Glycerine: even though this has been an approved sweetener, it has shown to produce an increase in blood sugar levels of diabetics. So there is a disagreemet between the food manufacturers and the FDA as to the category of glycerine.. The FDA says it's a carbohydrate and needs to be included as such in labeling foods. This is a major reason why a recent Consumer Labs study found the carbohydrate content of many "nutrition bars" was much higher than that declared on the label.

2. Non-nutritive sweeteners

1. Sweeteners that contain no calories are called non-nutritive, meaning you cannot derive any nutrition from them, including energy. The two most common artificial sweeteners that contain no calories are saccharin and acesulfame-K.
2. Saccharin: Saccharin is made from coal tar derivatives and is 300-700 times as sweet as table sugar (sucrose). But it is known to have caused bladder cancer in lab animals.
3. Acesulfame-K (K standards for potassium): It is a substance that is 200 times sweeter than sugar but is not absorbed by humans and is excreted essentially unchanged. It was discovered in the laboratory in 1967, went through the FDA approval process and is now most commonly marketed under the name Sunette® or Sweet One®. One of its main attractions is that it doesn't break down under heat so it can be used in making baked goods and candy.

3. Newer sweetener

Neotame: On July 5, 2002, The Food and Drug Administration approved a new non-nutritive sweetener, neotame, for use as a general-purpose sweetener. Neotame is a non-nutritive, high intensity sweetener that is manufactured by the NutraSweet Company. Depending on its food application, neotame is approximately 7,000 to 13,000 times sweeter than sugar.