A quick walk down the drink aisle of any corner store reveals the
incredible ingenuity of food scientists in search of sweet flavors.
In some drinks you’ll find sugar. A diet soda might have an
artificial or natural low-calorie sweetener. And found in nearly
everything else is high fructose corn syrup, the king of U.S.
sweetness.
I am a chemist who studies compounds found in nature, and I am
also a lover of food. With confusing food labels claiming foods
and beverages to be diet, zero-sugar or with “no artificial
sweeteners,” it can be confusing to know exactly what you are
consuming.
So what are these sweet molecules? How can cane sugar and
artificial sweeteners produce such similar flavors? First, it is
helpful to understand how taste buds work.
Taste buds and chemistry
The “taste map” – the idea that you taste different flavors on
different parts of your tongue – is far from the truth. People are
able to taste all flavors anywhere there are taste buds. So what’s
a taste bud?
Taste buds are areas on your tongue that contain dozens of
taste receptor cells. These cells can detect the five flavors –
sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. When you eat, food
molecules are dissolved in saliva and then washed across the
taste buds, where they bind to the different taste receptor cells.
Only molecules with certain shapes can bind to certain receptors,
and this produces the perception of different flavors.
Molecules that taste sweet bind to specific proteins on the taste
receptor cells called G-proteins. When a molecule binds these G-
proteins, it triggers a series of signals that are sent to the brain
where it is interpreted as sweet.
Natural sugars
Natural sugars are types of carbohydrates known
as saccharides that are made of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.
You can imagine sugars as rings of carbon atoms with pairs of
oxygen and hydrogen attached to the outside of the rings. The
oxygen and hydrogen groups are what make sugar sticky to the
touch. They behave like Velcro, sticking to the oxygen and
hydrogen pairs on other sugar molecules.
The simplest sugars are single-molecule sugars called
monosaccharides. You’ve probably heard of some of these.
Glucose is the most basic sugar and is mostly made by
plants. Fructose is a sugar from fruit. Galactose is a sugar in
milk.
Table sugar – or sucrose, which comes from sugar cane – is an
example of a dissacharide, a compound made of
two monosaccharides. Sucrose is formed when a glucose
molecule and a fructose molecule join together. Other common
dissacharides are lactose from milk and maltose, which comes
grains.
When these sugars are eaten, the body processes each of them
slightly differently. But eventually they are broken down into
molecules that your body converts into energy. The amount of
energy from sugar – and all food – is measured in calories.
High fructose corn syrup
High fructose corn syrup is a staple of U.S. foods, and this hybrid
sugar sweetener needs a category all on its own. High fructose
corn syrup is made from corn starch – the main carbohydrate
found in corn. Corn starch is made of thousands of glucose
molecules bonded together. At an industrial scale, the starch is
broken into individual glucose molecules using enzymes. This
glucose is then treated with a second enzyme to convert some of
it into fructose. Generally, high fructose corn syrup is
roughly 42%-55% fructose.
This blend is sweet and cheap to produce but has a high calorie
content. As with other natural sugars, too much high fructose
corn syrup is bad for your health. And since most processed foods
and drinks are packed full of the stuff, it is easy to consume too
much.
Natural nonsugar sweeteners
The second category of sweeteners could be defined as natural
nonsugar sweeteners. These are food additives such as stevia and
monk fruit, as well as natural sugar alcohols. These molecules
aren’t sugars, but they can still bind to the sweet receptors and
therefore taste sweet.
Stevia is a molecule that comes from the leaves of the Stevia
redaudiana plant. It contains “sweet” molecules that are much
larger than most sugars and have three glucose molecules
attached to them. These molecules are 30 to 150 times sweeter
than glucose itself. The sweet molecules from monk fruit are
similar to stevia and 250 times sweeter than glucose.
The human body has a really hard time breaking down both
stevia and monk fruit. So even though they’re both really sweet,
you don’t get any calories from eating them.
Sugar alcohols, like sorbital, for example, are not as sweet as
sucrose. They can be found in a variety of foods, including
pineapples, mushrooms, carrots and seaweed, and are often
added to diet drinks, sugar-free chewing gum and many other
foods and drinks. Sugar alcohols are made of chains of carbon
atoms instead of circles like normal sugars. While they are
composed of the same atoms as the sugars, sugar alcohols are
not absorbed well by the body so they are considered low-calorie
sweeteners.
Artificial sweeteners
The third way to make something sweet is to add artificial
sweeteners. These chemicals are produced in labs and factories
and are not found in nature. Like all things that taste sweet, they
do so because they can bind to certain receptors in taste buds.
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So far, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved six
artificial sweeteners. The most well known are probably
saccharin, aspartame and sucralose – better known as Splenda.
Artificial sweeteners all have different chemical formulas. Some
resemble natural sugars while others are radically different. They
are usually many times sweeter than sugar – saccharin is an
incredible 200 to 700 times sweeter than table sugar – and some
of them are hard for the body to break down.
While a sweet dessert may be a simple pleasure for many, the
chemistry of how your taste buds perceive sweetness is not so
simple. Only molecules with the perfect combination of atoms
taste sweet, but bodies deal with each of these molecules
differently when it comes to calories.
What's the difference between sugar, other natural sweeteners and artificial sweeteners? A food
chemist explains sweet science ([Link])