Fructose as food ingredient

Fructose is a sweetener that is monosaccharide found naturally in fresh fruit and honey. It is comprise of six carbon atoms. Fructose is known as fruit sugar or laevulose.

The commercial production of fructose is mainly from glucose syrups. It is obtained by the inversion of sucrose by means of the enzymes invertase and by the isomerization of corn syrup.

Fructose is the sweetest natural saccharide and is approximately 1-1.5 times as sweet as sucrose. It is also water soluble.

It is in baked goods because it reacts with amino acids to produce a browning reaction.It is used as a nutritive sweetener in low-calorie beverages.

Some plants including chicory Jerusalem artichokes and dahlias contain appreciable quantities of the polysaccharide inulin, which is a polymer of fructose.

Fructose is different from high fructose corn syrup. HFCS is fructose bound to glucose, making its chemical composition nearly the same as that of table sugar.
Fructose as food ingredient

Fructose as Sweetener in Soft Drinks

The term ‘bulk sweeteners’ is used for sugars who normal usage level in beverages places them as the second ingredient, behind carbonated water as the product declaration.

Today the list of commercial food products sweetened entirely with fructose or with a fructose and glucose mixture is long and varied and this includes soft drinks.

Most fructose used to sweetened commercial products is obtained from corn, not squeezed from fruit a process that is impractical for mass production.

Increasing the fructose content reduces viscosity; the level of sweetness increases. High levels of fructose limit the crystallization risk of the syrups, because fructose crystallizes only with difficulty.

Fructose syrups prevent the cap locking of food and pharmaceutical syrups in bottles.

The sweetener in commercial products is usually not fructose alone but a combination of fructose, glucose and other sugar.

In the mid 1980s, 55% high fructose corn syrup was adopted by the carbonated beverage industry and became prominent sweetener in soft drink. It was developed thirty years ago as a cheap alternative to sucrose, or table sugar.

The sweet taste in many soft drinks comes from a mixture of 55% fructose and 43% glucose.

Its cheap to make, tastes sweeter than sugar so manufacturer can use less of it.
Fructose as Sweetener in Soft Drinks

Fructose as a sweetener

Fructose is sweeter than table sugar. It is almost twice sweet as sugar. Fructose is a commercial sugar with same molecular structure as that in fruit.

Fructose was first extracted from cane sugar more than a century ago, and it’s found in varying amounts in such fruits as apples, grapes, oranges and berries.

Fructose can used as a sugar substitute in crystalline or syrup form. Most fructose used to sweeten commercial products is obtained from corn.

It has a low glycemic index, releasing out glucose into bloods stream slowly. Fructose produces liver glycogen rapidly making it a more efficient energy supply than other sweeteners.

It is monosaccharide sugar with an energy content of 4 kcals/g (17 kJ/g) but due to its increased sweetness can be used at lower levels than sucrose.

Fructose has been touted as a simple, natural and miracle sweetener; that is more healthful than white sugar.

It is also promoted as an aid to weight loss because it is sweeter than white sugar, enabling one to get the same sweetness with less sweetness.

Like sugar and salt, fructose is on the Food and Drug Administration’s list of additives ‘generally recognized as safe’.
Fructose as a sweetener

Fructose in Soft Drinks

Fructose in Soft Drinks
Fructose can also used as a sugar substitute in crystalline or syrup form.

It is present naturally in many fruits and in honey, but commercially it is manufactured using sucrose as a starting material.

Sucrose is first hydrolyzed to a glucose-fructose mixture.

The monosaccharides glucose and fructose are separated using chromatography and the fructose is then crystallized.

Fructose has some interesting physiological properties. It is monosaccharide sugar with an energy content of 4 kcals/g (17 kJ/g) but due to its increased sweetness can be used at lower levels than sucrose.

Fructose is slowly absorbed and metabolized by the body, independent of insulin production, and does not cause rapid rises in blood glucose after ingestion.

It is therefore, suitable for diabetics and also for use in drinks intended to act as a lower more sustained energy source.

Owing it to limited effect on blood glucose, it is a low glycaemic index sweetener (compared with glucose).

This is an area of increased nutritional interest and may be a stimulus to the greater use of fructose in drinks.

Fructose has also been shown to have an increase satiety effect, compared with other sweeteners.

Mineral absorption (iron and calcium) has also been shown to be positively affected by the incorporation of fructose into the diet.

Chemically, fructose is very active and it readily takes part in maillard reactions, which may cause browning in some products.

It is available in crystalline anhydrous form and also in high concentrations syrups.
Fructose in Soft Drinks

Glucose Syrups/High Fructose Syrups

Glucose Syrups/High Fructose Syrups
Glucose syrups, also known as corn syrups in the United States, are defined by European Commission (EC) as ‘a refined, concentrated aqueous solution of D(+)-glucose, maltose and other polymers of D-glucose obtained by the controlled partial hydrolysis of starch.

Glucose syrups were first manufactured industrially in the nineteenth century by acid hydrolysis of starch.

Hydrochloric acid was normally used, because sulphuric acid cause haze in syrups due to insoluble sulphates.

The source of starch can vary; in United States corn is widely used, whereas in other part o the world wheat, potato and cassava starch also employed.

The method is non specific, but of conditions are tightly controlled, it is possible to make products with a reasonably consistent carbohydrate profile.

Enzymes are also use to hydrolyze starch to glucose syrups, and these give a greater degree of control over the sugar profile of the resulting syrup.

The availability of commercial isomerizes enzymes in the 1970s, which are capable of converting glucose to fructose, allowed significant development of the production of high-fructose corn syrups with fructose levels of 42% an a sweetness level equivalent to sucrose.

Use of separation technology allowed further refinement of these products to give 55% fructose syrups.

These types of syrups are used extensively in the soft drinks, particularly in the United States.

In soft drinks, glucose, syrups are used to provide sweetness and mouthfeel to products and occasionally specific physiological properties in sports and energy drinks.
Glucose Syrups/High Fructose Syrups

Fructose

Fructose
Of the other sugars used by humans, fructose (also known as levulose), a monosaccharide (C6H12O6), is the sweetest (nearly twice as sweet as the table sugar, sucrose); and it is the most water soluble of the sugars.

It is hygroscopic, making it an excellent humectant when used in baked goods. The value of a humectant in baked goods is that it retards their dehydration.

Solution of fructose have a low viscosity that results in lower ‘body’ feel than sucrose but in greater flexibility of use over a wide range of temperatures.

Because of its greater solubility and more effective sweetness than sucrose, fructose is better alternative to sucrose when very sweet solutions are required, as fructose will not crystallize out of solution, whereas sucrose will.

Fructose has sometimes been called the fruit sugar, since it occurs in many fruits and berries. It also occurs as a major component in honey, corn syrup, cane sugar and beet sugar.

In fact sucrose, a disaccharide, is composed of glucose and fructose. Of these tow components, the glucose moiety cannot be monopolized by diabetics and it is for this reason that the ingestion of sucrose cannot be tolerated by diabetics.

Fructose, on the other hand, does not require insulin for its metabolism and can be used by diabetics with no concern. When used with saccharin it tends to mask the bitter aftertaste of saccharin. As its apparently accelerates the metabolism of alcohol, it has been used to treat those suffering from overdoses of alcohol.

It has been recommended as a rapid source of energy for athletes and in combination with gluconate and saccharin, as an economic, effective, safe, low calorie sweetener for beverages.
Fructose