Sweetened fibres – the sweet journey (part 6 of 6)

In five arti­cles we have looked at sug­ars, sug­ar alco­hols and oth­er bulk sweet­en­ers, as well as arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers and high inten­sive sweet sub­stances from nat­ur­al sources. We have realised that the prob­lem that we want to solve is the high ener­gy con­tent of sug­ar, and the high gly­caemic index rel­a­tive to its sweet­ness, and that the solu­tion is a high inten­sive sweet sub­stance from a source that feels just as nat­ur­al as that of reg­u­lar sug­ar. But one chal­lenge remains.

The challenge

If we replace one kilo of sug­ar with three grams of ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides – which are extract­ed from ste­via in much the same way that sug­ar is extract­ed from sug­ar beets – then we have to replace the oth­er 997 grams with some­thing else.

This ”some­thing else” should first and fore­most fill the sug­ar space – give bulk. But it must also give the right mouth­feel. And it may need to com­pen­sate for ste­vi­ol gly­co­sides slight­ly bit­ter taste and licorice-like after­taste. In addi­tion, it should be able to be used in man­u­fac­tur­ing with­out any spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tions or changes in the man­u­fac­tur­ing process. Right?

Exactly what this ”some­thing else” is depends on the appli­ca­tion. It is rarely just one ingre­di­ent, but sev­er­al. Which and in what pro­por­tions must be care­ful­ly adapt­ed to the appli­ca­tion. It requires exper­tise and equip­ment that many pro­duc­ers lack, and it takes a long time and costs a lot of money.

One solution for many recipes

Even if all recipes, or for­mu­la­tions, are dif­fer­ent, there are great sim­i­lar­i­ties in how sug­ar is used in many appli­ca­tion areas.

For exam­ple, sug­ar is used to sweet­en ice cream, but it is also used to give the ice cream its tex­ture and soft­ness mak­ing it pos­si­ble to scoop up. This is true for almost all ice cream (edi­ble ices being the excep­tion), even if each kind of ice cream has its unique recipe. The same goes for bread, bak­ery prod­ucts, choco­late, jel­lies, sauces, soups etc.

You can devel­op one or a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent solu­tions for each appli­ca­tion area and then use it in each recipe, instead of sug­ar. It may still take some adjust­ment for each recipe, but it’s not at all as cost­ly and time con­sum­ing as doing it from scratch.

So what does a solu­tion like this look like?

Replacing the bulk of sugar

One of the biggest prob­lems with replac­ing sug­ar with a high inten­sive sweet sub­stance from a nat­ur­al source is that the bulk­ing dis­ap­pears. The high inten­sive sweet sub­stance doesn’t fill it out like sug­ar does.

You can use malti­tol to fill the void left by sug­ar. But this won’t gain you much. Maltitol has half of sugar’s calo­ries and more than half of sugar’s GI. This is not good.

You can also use ery­thri­tol, which has zero kcal and GI. Erythritol feels like sug­ar in your mouth, or would do, if it wasn’t for its cool­ing effect which occurs when it comes into con­tact with saliva.

Both malti­tol and ery­thri­tol is, like all sug­ar alco­hols, less pleas­ant to con­sume in larg­er amounts. They bind liq­uid in the large intes­tine, which can lead to diar­rhoea. This is why prod­ucts con­tain­ing more than 10% of sug­ar alco­hols must car­ry the warn­ing that exces­sive con­sump­tion may have a lax­a­tive effect.

Two oth­er pop­u­lar, but equal­ly poor, solu­tions are mal­todex­trine and polydextrose.

Maltodextrin con­tains the same num­ber of calo­ries as reg­u­lar sug­ar and has a GI between 120 and 150 – far above reg­u­lar sugar.

Polydextrose has calo­ries and GI com­pa­ra­ble to sug­ar alco­hols. Unfortunately, it is also not the only qual­i­ties it shares with sug­ar alco­hols – both are lax­a­tive as well.

Fibre enriched

Dietary fibres are a bet­ter solu­tion to fill­ing the void left by sug­ar. This is pos­i­tive in two respects for con­sumers: they per­ceive it as both nat­ur­al and healthy. From a food tech­nol­o­gy per­spec­tive fibres also con­tribute with oth­er good qualities.

A sweet cocktail

Often it is not enough to replace the bulk of sug­ar with dietary fibres, and its sweet­ness with a high inten­sive sweet­en­er of nat­ur­al ori­gin. To get the taste and tex­ture you require you might need a small amount of sug­ar alco­hols, mal­todex­trine or polydextrose.

But in dif­fer­ence to using these for bulk­ing pur­pos­es, the quan­ti­ties need­ed are small and far from any that may cause diges­tive issues.

Is the solu­tion then to use dietary fibres, a high inten­sive sweet­en­er from nat­ur­al ori­gin, and pos­si­bly a lit­tle of some­thing else..?

Not quite.

The ideal solution

Anybody who has tried to replace sug­ar with dietary fibres and sweet­en­ers of var­i­ous kinds can tes­ti­fy that this is not as sim­ple as you might think. There are three issues to be addressed.

First of all, you need the ”right” dietary fibre. You need to find a fibre that has the right qual­i­ties suit­able for the appli­ca­tion in which it is to be used. But equal­ly impor­tant is that you have to choose a fibre that can be pur­chased in high enough quan­ti­ties and at an accept­able price. Not an easy equa­tion to solve.

Then you need the right sweet­en­er. Of course it should be of nat­ur­al ori­gin and not add more calo­ries or raise the GI more than absolute­ly nec­es­sary. The solu­tion is nor­mal­ly some kind of ste­vi­ol gly­co­side, e.g. Reb A or Reb M, in com­bi­na­tion with a small amount of sug­ar alco­hol, mal­todex­trine and poly­dex­trose. Sometimes you might add some nat­ur­al flavour­ing too.

Finally, you need to make sure it all actu­al­ly replaces sug­ar. The end prod­uct must replace sug­ar one-to-one in recipes. It needs to be stor­able, trans­portable and pos­si­ble to han­dle with­out it shift­ing into lay­ers. And it must be pos­si­ble to use in pro­duc­tion with­out hav­ing to alter the recipe or the pro­duc­tion process. To make this come togeth­er may the hard­est part of all.

Sweetened fibres

The ide­al solu­tion to the prob­lem to replace sug­ar in an appli­ca­tion area is thus

1. find the right fibre,
2. find the right mix of high inten­sive sweet­en­ers of nat­ur­al ori­gin and a small amount of sug­ar alco­hol, mal­todex­trine and/​or poly­dex­trose, and
3. cre­ate a homoge­nous solu­tion that replaces sug­ar one-to-one in both the recipe and pro­duc­tion process.

We call this solu­tion sweet­ened fibres.

And now?

Finally! We have come to the end of our jour­ney. We start­ed with reg­u­lar sug­ar and the prob­lem that caus­es. The jour­ney then took us on past oth­er sug­ar types, sug­ar alco­hols, oth­er bulk sweet­en­ers, arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers, and high inten­sive sweet­en­ers of nat­ur­al ori­gin before we final­ly arrived at the best solu­tion: sweet­ened fibres.

It has been a pleas­ant jour­ney. And we hope that you have found some gems of knowl­edge to take home.

If you think sweet­ened fibres sounds like some­thing that would suit you and your busi­ness, maybe you would like to try it even, you are more than wel­come to get in touch. We will answer your ques­tions to the best of our abil­i­ty, and if you want to try sweet­ened fibres in your recipes we will help you with this too. Send us an e-mail at info@​baynsolutions.​com or give us a call on +46 8 613 28 88.

We are look­ing for­ward to hear­ing from you!