Why Erythritol is So Popular?
Sep 09, 2021
Today, China is the world's largest producer and exporter of synthetic sweeteners.
More than 100 years ago, chemist Constantin Fahlberg once had a big fight with his cook while eating dinner at home. He thought the bread was too sweet for the day, while the cook was so convinced of his cooking skills that he insisted he had put just the right amount of sugar.
Fahlberg was furious to find that the water was actually sweet, and sensing something was wrong, he licked his fingers again, only to find that he was also sweet. This daily two-point chemist immediately ran back to the laboratory as if he had found a new world.
Then he did the unthinkable: he licked all the test tubes and instruments in the lab.
Fahlberg thus discovered "saccharin", the first generation of sweeteners. At that time, sugar was not produced in large quantities and was very expensive, and many of the royal family had diabetes due to excessive sugar intake. The invention of "saccharin" undoubtedly made Fahlberg a fortune.
However, since its invention, "saccharin" has been controversial, and was even once banned. But the market for sweeteners opened up by saccharin began to grow. People are constantly looking for "sugar substitutes" that can perfectly replace the taste of cane sugar without bringing calories and side effects.
The sugar substitute used in sugar-free colas is aspartame, an artificial sweetener. Recent studies have shown that this artificial sweetener may alter intestinal flora and cause glucose intolerance.
Erythritol, which is widely used in various sugar-free beverages today, is a much better natural sweetener.
But the only disadvantage of erythritol is that it is expensive. The cost price of erythritol is about $20 ($3) a kilogram, and it is only 7/10 of the sweetness of sucrose, while aspartame is 200 times sweeter than sucrose, making the cost of sugar substitute formulations almost negligible.
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