Sweeteners, caloric and non-caloric

We had a group of college students from the Dallas area visit several government research facilities in our area over their spring break.  They spent a day with us.  One of our scientists, Dr. Paul White, was asked questions about sugar (i.e., table sugar or granulated sucrose) in comparison to other sweeteners, including how their chemical structures differed from sucrose.  After the tour, Paul developed a graphic that the rest of the scientists could use whenever the subject might come up again in future visits by the public.  Paul graciously allowed me to use his graphic as the basis for a personal blog entry.  I rearranged the order of the sweeteners and embellished his original graphic with color.  The chemical structures of the various sweeteners were taken from Wikipedia.

Sucrose is the standard by which all other sweeteners are measured.  High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the next most important caloric sweetener, but it has declined as of late for two reasons, 1) a negative image in comparison to table sugar, and 2) increased prices for corn which has made table sugar increasingly cost competitive.  The corn industry has worked hard to overcome the negative image that the public has of HFCS, and are now seeking permission from the FDA to use the name "corn sugar" on food labels.  Commercials from the corn industry state, "whether it's corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can't tell the difference. Sugar is sugar."  Natural caloric sweeteners of lesser importance include honey, maple syrup, etc.

Non-caloric sweeteners have had less impact on cane and beet sugar consumption than HFCS.  But their impact is still substantial.  We have essentially gone through four generations of non-caloric sweeteners, namely saccharin (Sweet'N Low), aspartame (Equal), sucralose (Sweeta), and now Stevia glycosides from the Stevia plant, sold in various formulations as Stevia, Truvia, etc.  The latter is a natural product.  The others are artificial sweeteners, though sucralose is a sucrose molecule modified (some OH groups replaced with Cl) in a way that makes it 600 times as sweet as sucrose.