Erythritol - continuing the story

Yesterday afternoon I finished all the erythritol that I had received from iHerb. This means that in 7 days I consumed 454 grams, or 65 g/day. As the recommended usage is 1 g/day/kg body weight, I used less than the recommend usage. So far, so good. But I can't really say that the tea that I sweetened with erythritol was sweet; on the other hand, it wasn't bitter or sour, nor did it have an aftertaste. 

As I had no more erythritol, I was 'forced' to use my old sweetener, saccharin, for my first few cups of tea. Since then, I've been down to the kibbutz store and bought a different type of sweetener: sucralose. As sucralose is at least 300 times sweeter than sugar on a per weight basis, obviously one needs a very small amount. It is sold in sachets, where 0.7% of the sachet is sucralose and the rest is erythritol. As each sachet weighs about 1gram, let's assume that the amount of erythritol is 1 gram. The sucralose is also not metabolised by the body.

My first cup of tea with this sweetener was very sweet but with a bitter aftertaste. I didn't notice it before, but the sachet says that one sachet is equivalent to two teaspoons of sugar; I of course put two sachets in the cup of tea. I wonder whether one sachet will give the same bitter aftertaste. I have seen on websites pellets of sucralose (see the picture on the left) - I may order this in the future. One interesting fact is that there are 200 pellets in the container, but the net weight is only 17 grams; I take this to mean that there is much less erythritol in the pellets than is in the sachets.

Sucralose is produced by the selective chlorination of sucrose (table sugar); the food scientist in me does not understand why this should make sucralose so much sweeter than sucrose. I assume that the chlorine atoms force the compound to assume a physical configuration that fits well onto the receptors on the tongue. The learned article that discusses this can be found here: I'm going to read this with interest.

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This day in history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
836	01/05/2015	Vinyl log 8 - 1 May	Vinyl log, Peter Hammill, Steeleye Span