No sugar? Yeah right!

What hap­pens when you remove sug­ar from food, say ice cream? Yes, the taste dete­ri­o­rates, but also the mouth­feel. Sugar pro­vides sweet­ness, but also sev­er­al oth­er prop­er­ties. It cre­ates vol­ume, creami­ness and tex­ture. If you want to replace it with some­thing else, it must pro­vide the same taste and mouth­feel as sug­ar. In this arti­cle, we explain how sweet­ened fibres does exact­ly that.

The ice cream example

If you eat ice cream that con­tains sweet­ened fibres, you will not miss the sug­ar. The taste is the same. It tastes sweet, just like reg­u­lar ice cream.

But what exact­ly are sweet­ened fibres and what is taste?

Let’s return to sweet­ened fibres. We start by explor­ing taste. It is a ques­tion that you may think you know the answer to, but which is not so easy to express in words and sentences.

What is taste?

Our expe­ri­ence of food and drink is com­posed of taste, aro­ma and mouth­feel. We have five basic tastes that we can feel with the help of recep­tors on the tongue: sweet, salty, sour, bit­ter and umami.

Taste is close­ly linked with our sense of smell. When we eat, fra­grances are released that trav­el up into the nose and reach the odour recep­tors. Simply put, it can be said that the mouth and nose togeth­er cre­ate the taste experience.

In ice cream, we want sweet­ness, of course. But where does it come from if we remove sugar?

Sweetness

The sweet­ness in ice cream with fibres comes from ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides, a sweet sub­stance from the ste­via plant. Steviol gly­co­sides are sev­er­al hun­dred times sweet­er than sug­ar, but they often have a cer­tain bit­ter­ness (except for new­er vari­eties such as Reb M). Therefore, we must mask the bit­ter taste, which we do by com­bin­ing oth­er substances.

Steviol gly­co­sides can how­ev­er only pro­vide sweet­ness. Ice cream with sweet­ened fibres is not only sweet; it is also creamy, full-bod­ied and offers the right tex­ture. All those things that make the right mouth­feel. How do we get all those prop­er­ties with­out sug­ar? We will go into that short­ly, but let us first look into mouth­feel – what is that?

What is mouthfeel?

In sim­ple terms, it can be said that mouth­feel is the chem­i­cal and phys­i­cal food expe­ri­ence in addi­tion to the taste expe­ri­ence. Receptors in the tongue, teeth and oth­er parts of the mouth make us sense pres­sure, vibra­tion, fric­tion and tem­per­a­ture differences.

In this way, we feel when a slice of bread feels old and ‘stale’ or that there is some­thing wrong with the ice cream, even though we may not be able to put our fin­ger on exact­ly what is wrong. We may think the taste is bad, but often it’s the mouth­feel to blame and not the taste.

In the arti­cle What is mouth­feel? you can read more in-depth about this excit­ing topic.

What will provide bulk?

Back to the ice cream. We know that sweet­ness comes from ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. But we also know that we need to add oth­er things to pro­vide the same mouth­wa­ter­ing mouth­feel that sug­ar gives. The answer to this is is a vari­ety of sug­ar alco­hols and fibres.

These ingre­di­ents fill pro­vide bulk and back­bone and pre­vent the ice cream from collapsing.

Sugar alcohols

Sugar alco­hols have sev­er­al func­tions. First of all, it con­tributes to bulk; it adds vol­ume. And with the bulk comes the right mouth­feel. It is also sweet – though not as sweet as sug­ar. In some appli­ca­tions, sug­ar alco­hol can also replace some of the oth­er prop­er­ties of sugar.

Dietary fibres

Then we have dietary fibres whose main task is to hold on to the oth­er ingre­di­ents. It is the retain­ing func­tion that turns sweet­ened fibres into sug­ar-like grains. But fibres also con­tributes to bulk and mouthfeel.

Sweetened fibres

Fibres and sug­ar alco­hols do not just cre­ate the right mouth­feel. Some dietary fibres also offer taste and sweet­ness. They also help to mask the liquorice-like after­taste in the ste­vi­ol glycosides.

In ice cream with sweet­ened fibres, we find the sug­ar alco­hol malti­tol and the fibres dex­trin and inulin. Together with the ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides, a uni­tary sug­ar sub­sti­tute is cre­at­ed that offers sweet­ness and taste, masks off-flavours and con­tributes to bulk and mouthfeel.

Let’s return to the ice cream and take a clos­er look at what each ingre­di­ent contributes.

A winning team

Maltitol is a sug­ar alco­hol that has the same freez­ing point depres­sion as sug­ar, which means that ice cream made from malti­tol offers a sim­i­lar mouthfeel.

Dextrin is a sta­ble fibre that can with­stand tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­ences as well as high and low pH val­ues. Dextrin pro­vides the ice cream with struc­ture and back­bone so it doesn’t turn into a smooth sauce.

Finally, we have inulin. A fibre that has sim­i­lar prop­er­ties to dex­trin and gives the ice cream a pre­dictable melt­ing behav­iour. Another impor­tant prop­er­ty of inulin is that it improves the taste of the ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides. The taste becomes sweet­er and more pleasant.

Different foods – different solutions

Sweetened fibres for ice cream is called Eureba D-01 and is a 1: 1 solu­tion for ice cream and dairy products.

Eureba can be used in a vari­ety of foods. It can be used in bak­ing, var­i­ous types of choco­late and con­fec­tionery, but also dairy prod­ucts, soups and sauces.

Does this mean that there is one Eureba solu­tion for all these foods?

No, our Eureba range con­sists of turnkey solu­tions that are spe­cial­ly devel­oped for dif­fer­ent foods. Fibres and sug­ar alco­hols dif­fer and have dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties, which is reflect­ed in which prod­ucts they fit best in.

In the arti­cle series Sugar reduc­tion in prac­tice, you can read more in-depth about the fibres and sug­ar alco­hols found in our Eureba solutions.

Get help from experts

Developing such a solu­tion on your own is no easy task. You need to find the right ste­via extract, the right fibres and sug­ar alco­hols for your par­tic­u­lar prod­uct. But just as impor­tant is the dosage so you don’t get too big or too small amounts of any ingre­di­ent. It is a labo­ri­ous job that requires both mon­ey and the right skills.

Your turn: Try Eureba

Do you want to try Eureba? Fill in the form below and we will send you a prod­uct sam­ple. The offer is pri­mar­i­ly aimed at those who work pro­fes­sion­al­ly with food at a food pro­duc­er or distributor.

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