Low-calorie bulk sweeteners: Recent advances in physical benefits, applications, and bioproduction

Abstract

At present, with the continuous improvement of living standards, people are paying increasing attention to dietary nutrition and health. Low sugar and low energy consumption have become important dietary trends. In terms of sugar control, more and more countries have implemented sugar taxes in recent years. Hence, as the substitute for sugar, low-calorie sweeteners have been widely used in beverage, bakery, and confectionary industries. In general, low-calorie sweeteners consist of high-intensity and low-calorie bulk sweeteners (some rare sugars and sugar alcohols). In this review, recent advances and challenges in low-calorie bulk sweeteners are explored. Bioproduction of low-calorie bulk sweeteners has become the focus of many researches, because it has the potential to replace the current industrial scale production through chemical synthesis. A comprehensive summary of the physicochemical properties, physiological functions, applications, bioproduction, and regulation of typical low-calorie bulk sweeteners, such as D-allulose, D-tagatose, D-mannitol, sorbitol, and erythritol, is provided.

Keywords:

• Low-calorie
• bulk sweeteners
• rare sugar
• sugar alcohol
• bioproduction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest is reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFC2104900), Key-Area Research and Development Program of Guangdong Province (2020B020226007) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JUSRP622008).