What is a sweetener?

Jul 23 2021

What is a sweetener?
Sweeteners refer to food additives such as sucrose, fructose and starch sugar that impart sweetness to food or feed, improve food quality, and meet people's needs for food. Sweeteners should have the characteristics of high safety, good taste, high stability, good water solubility, and reasonable price. Sweetness is an important indicator of sweeteners.
The main functions of sweeteners in food are as follows:
(1) Taste: Sweetness is one of the indicators of many foods. In order to make food and beverages palatable, it is necessary to add a certain amount of sweetener.
(2) The adjustment and enhancement of flavor generally requires sweetness in pastries; in beverages, the adjustment of flavor includes the "sugar-acid ratio" item. The sweetener can make the product obtain a good flavor while retaining the fresh taste.
(3) The formation of flavor, sweetness and the flavor of many foods are complementary to each other. The taste of many products is produced by the combination of flavor substances and sweeteners, so many foods add sweeteners.