Photo: SUSTA.

A new sweetener is muscling onto store shelves already saturated with pink, blue and yellow packets.

SUSTA is the latest sugar substitute to hit store shelves with what developers call a proprietary blend of "inulin fiber, fructose, natural flavors, botanical extracts, vitamins, minerals and probiotics." At 5 calories, SUSTA claims its sweet punch from orange-peel extract.

But its inspiration came the Newton way -- with an apple.

Gourmet's Barry Estabrook finds that the latest nutritional studies are at odds with what some manufacturers' campaigns might have us believe. The following is an excerpt of his findings published on Gourmet.com.

Nothing spoils a good marketing campaign as surely as solid, scientific facts. So I imagine the folks over at the Corn Refiners' Association-who have recently spent a fortune on PR and advertising to convince "moms and healthcare professionals" that high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was no better or worse for us nutritionally than sweeteners such as table sugar and honey-were shocked when they opened the latest issue of the Journal of Nutrition.

It contains a paper by a group of researchers at the University of Texas who report that fructose, the primary sugar in HFCS (which finds its way into just about every non-diet soft drink sold), made subjects of a study fatter than glucose, another sugar.

"Our study shows for the first time the surprising speed with which humans make body fat from fructose," said Elizabeth Parks of the Southwestern Medical Center.

It also may explain why the current obesity epidemic in this country dates back to 1980, the year HFCS entered our diet. Starting from zero, Americans now gulp an average of 66 pounds of the stuff each year.

And it shows.

The story continues at Gourmet.com: Politics of the Plate: How Sweet It Isn't

Try Honibe's Honey Drop, which the company claims is the first non-sticky solid honey product.

Each drop contains about a teaspoon of honey, and comes in a little packet just like your typical sweetener. But unlike your typical sweetener-in-a-bag, it doesn't contain any artificial ingredients. The product comes in a regular and a lemon flavor.

Even though I keep reading the company name "Oh-KNEE-bay" instead of "honeybee," the solid honey drop seems like the perfect solution to a problem that has plagued all tea drinkers at some point or another: sticky fingers.

Check out their aptly-named homepage, NoStickyFingers.com, for more info.

If you check out the labels on natural food products, you'll see agave syrup listed as an ingredient more and more often. Agave syrup - sometimes called agave nectar - is a natural sweetener that is marketed as a healthy alternative to processed sugars, as well as an alternative to honey, corn syrup and similar liquid sweeteners. The syrup is made from blue agave, a type of succulent, cactus-like plant that is also used in the production of tequila. The thick liquid comes in light and dark forms, the latter being unfiltered, and tastes similar to honey.

So what makes this syrup "healthier" than other sweeteners? It has a very low Glycemic Index (GI) value, so although it is noticeably sweeter than sugar, it doesn't cause the same type of "sugar rush" that other sweets do. Table sugar has a GI value of 68, on a scale from 1 to 100, while honey comes in at 55. Agave syrup has a value of around 15.

Agave syrup can be used in baked goods, with a reduction in the amount of liquid in the recipe to account for its presence. Starting with a recipe that already calls for honey and substituting it in is a good way to start, but as a general rule, you'll will need to spend some time playing around with your favorite recipes to get them to work, especially if you want to substitute it into a recipe that calls for crystallized sugars. The syrup will dissolve easily in liquids and is a good choice for sweetening iced tea or lemonade.

A new product has just been launched by the National Honey Board. Simply Honey, dried honey wafers made from 100% honey and nothing else. They are one of the first new products designed to use dehydrated, dried honey as a way to sweeten hot beverages. They are portable and mess free, which can't be said about regular honey and each wafer is around the size and thickness of a quarter.

I love honey and use it in most of my herb teas, on French toast, and in cooking, but it does find a way to leave sticky trails around my pantry. I also spent a lot of time in the wilderness camping and hiking, and my little honey bear always leaked all over my clothes in my back pack. This looks like a great way to have your honey and eat it too. Mess free, easy to use, and with the great taste of honey too.

The product was launched for consumer reaction this past summer at several trade shows around the US. It may take awhile for it to become fully developed, but hopefully it should be on the market sometime in the near future.

Somewhere around 25% of coffee drinkers in the US now prefer their coffee with a flavor, such as hazelnut or vanilla, and at least that many use calorie-free sweeteners in place of sugar on a regular basis. Splenda's new Flavor Blends for Coffee combine those concepts. They are packets of sweetener flavored to taste like French Vanilla, Hazelnut and Mocha, allowing consumers to "customize hot beverages at home or on the go with no calories."

The Flavor Blends only launched this week, so they might not be in stores in your area yet, but for fans of Splenda, they sound very promising. They will be ideal for using at the office, rather than going out to Starbucks for a high-calorie (and relatively high-cost) mocha. Their small size also allows them be tucked into a purse or coat pocket when traveling, but they will work well for regular home use, too.

Piloncillo is an unrefined sugar that is commonly used in Mexican cooking. The sugar has been around for at least 500 years, and was being made before the Spanish came to Mexico around 1500. It is made when sugar canes are crushed, the juice is collected and boiled then poured into molds, where it hardens into blocks. The fact that it comes in block form is one of the reasons why white and brown sugars are more commonly used, even in Mexican cooking, than piloncillo once was. To use it, it must be grated or chiseled off the main block - a process which is well worth the resulting flavor boost in food to some, but too time consuming for others to bother.

Unlike white sugar, which is flat and one-dimensional in its sweet flavor, piloncillo is smoky, caramely and earthy. It has far more flavor than brown sugar, which is generally just white sugar with a small amount of molasses added back to it. It can be uses in moles and other sauces, as well as to simple sweeten coffee or top off buttery toast. In most applications, it must be melted down to be incorporated into recipes. You can find piloncillo in many Mexican or Latin American grocery stores or order it online.

Stevia is not a sweetener that is approved for use by the FDA. It is actually classified as a dietary supplement, an herb, that happens to be sweeter than sugar and can be - and is - used as a sweetener. It is all natural, has no calories (or carbs) and is getting more and more popular, though it makes up only a small portion of the non-sugar sweetener market.

Its popularity is due to an increased awareness for the product, thanks to well-placed advertisements and hard work on the part of the SweetLeaf Stevia brand's LA marketing firm, which has made sure that high end restaurants and even stores carry the product, prompting even more coverage from newspapers and magazines.

The only problem with Stevia, according to both the manufacturers and consumers, is that it is still hard to find. Not all stores carry it. Some stores, like Trader Joe's, try to make the product easily visible, but because it is an herb, it is often stocked in the supplements aisle in other stores, not in the section of the market with the sugars and sweeteners. Clearly this is not a huge setback, however, because the sales of the sweetener are steadily increasing. In the last year alone, they have increased almost 40%, though overall sales are only one tenth of the sales of Splenda, the top selling non-sugar sweetener.

If the interest in the product keeps growing at this rate - and it seems likely to - we could see Stevia become more widely available and used in more packaged products in place of artificial sugars.

High fructose corn syrup is something that we commonly hear we should avoid. When we ask why, we're told that it's bad for us. But is it really that bad? The New York Times takes a look at that question by going straight to the source and talking to the scientists who put out some of the first research linking HFCS to obesity, as well as many other members of the scientific and medical community.

Basically, the upshot of all this hype is that high fructose corn syrup isn't that bad - certainly no worse than other forms sugar. In fact, it is only high in fructose when compared to regular corn syrup and actually has less than table sugar. This doesn't mean that the medical community isn't saying it is health food, but experts like Dr. Walter Willett, the chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health, say '"There's no substantial evidence to support the idea that high-fructose corn syrup is somehow responsible for obesity," and seem to believe that we would still have an obesity problem if all the HFCS in food disappeared overnight.

More recent medical studies, instead of focusing on HFCS specifically, have looked at products that have added sugar in any form and recommend that they all be consumed minimally, whether the sweetener comes from corn, cane, beet or other sources.

Millions of people drink aspartame each day in their diet sodas and other sugar-free foods, though there are many other sweetener options to choose from. The brand name artificial sweeteners made with aspartame include Equal and Nutra-Sweet. In the past, study results have suggested that there might be a link between aspartame consumption and increased risk of some types of cancer, particularly when aspartame consumption was unusually high. Virtually all of these previous studies were in groups of rats, not people, and the amount of aspartame given to rats was up to several times their body weight - a feat which might be physically impossibly to do via diet cola consumption.

A new federal study has looked at people, not rodents, and shows that there was no increased cancer risk from aspartame consumption. The researchers in the study looked at over 500,000 American diets to draw their conclusions. The study has been praised by consumer groups and was presented to the American Association of Cancer research earlier this week. (Our sister blog - The Cancer Blog - is also talking about this study.)

 

 New studies show that preference for artificial sweeteners is based on a lack of extraneous flavors in the sweetener, not not the sweetness level of the substance. Thirteen sweeteners were rated according to how prevalent bitter, sour or metallic tastes were in them. Sugar was, not surprisingly, ranked the highest in the test. Sucralose, also known as Splenda, was the second most popular sweetener, with a "lack of noticeable sour and bitter tastes." Xylitol (a sweetener commonly used in chewing gum), aspartame (Equal and Nutra-Sweet), saccharine (Sweet N'Low) and Stevia were also ranked highly by tasters. Sugar is the standard when creating artificial sweeteners, so it makes sense that the products that tasted most like sugar would be the most popular.

What sweetener do you prefer when sugar isn't available?

Last year, retail giant Wal-Mart pulled Splenda brand products from its shelves and began to test market a product called Altern. Altern is Wal-Mart's own brand of the artificial sweetener sucralose. According to CNN, a spokesperson for Wal-Mart revealed that the company is planning to have all of its supercenters fully stocked with Altern by the end of this month, while a spokesperson from Tate & Lyle, the company that distributes Splenda, issued a statement assuring investors that this new product would have no effect on its own sucralose division.

Despite the T&L assurance, it seems likely that Splenda would experience some drop off in direct-to-consumer sales as Wal-Mart replaces its products. Altern's release should not have an effect on the use of Splenda by food and drink manufacturers, however.

My lemonade taste test generated a flurry of responses. It seems that quite a few people have opinions about the sugar derived substitute and even though Splenda has been around for a while now, I don't think I'm the only one who never really used it at home. The lemonade worked out pretty well, with the Splenda tasting very good, even when compared to the sugar-sweetened version. One comment on my previous post suggested that sweetening plain yogurt might be a more interesting way to use the sweetener.

Did you know that Splenda is 600 times sweeter than sugar? I didn't and probably put a bit too much Splenda into that batch of yogurt. At least, I think I put too much Splenda in. Though the artificially sweetened yogurt wasn't unpleasant, the taste of sweetness overwhelmed the actual flavor of the yogurt, reminding me almost exactly of commercially sweetened products. The yogurt sweetened with sugar was sweet, but the sweetness enhanced the tang and flavor of my yogurt, rather than masking it. I would use Splenda again, but would be very conservative in how much I used so the flavor wouldn't compete with the yogurt. In this round of Splenda vs. sugar, though, sugar definitely comes out ahead.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]