Artificial Sweeteners And Sweetening Agents - Practice Questions & MCQ

These are the chemcial compounds which give sweetening effect to the food and enhance its odour and flavour. Sugars such as sucrose, fructose, lactose are the most widely used natural sweetening agents. However, excess consumption of sugar leads to many diseases such as diabeted, obesity, tooth decay and coronary heart disease. The artificial sweeteners are another type of food additives which are much more sweeter than sugar and non-nutritive in nature and are used as substitutes for sugar in foods and beverages especially soft dringks. Some examples of artificial sweetening agents are saccharin, aspartame, cyclamates, alitame, dulcin and sucrolose, etc.
Aspartame is the most successful and widely used artificial sweetener. It is roughly 100 times as sweet as cane sugar. It is methyl ester of dipeptide formed from aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Use of aspartame is limited to cold foods and soft drinks because it is unstable at cooking temperature. Alitame is high potency sweetener, although it is more stable than aspartame, the control of sweetness of food is difficult while using it. Sucralose is trichloro derivative of sucrose. Its appearance and taste are like sugar. It is stable at cooking temperature. It does not provide calories.