There’s a new sweetener, from natural sources, that’s 3,500 times stronger than sugar. Sounds like a winner, all around. So it also sounds like we should all get up to speed about Sweelin’! It could be The Sweetener of the Future!
Sweelin’ is a brand new product that’s just been cleared for sale by the US Food and Drug Administ-ration (FDA). According to a recent Food & Wine story, “the product is made from monellin, a ‘sweet protein’ that is a category of naturally occurring proteins that taste intensely sweet but do not spike blood glucose the way sugar does.”
Monellin was first isolated from the West African Serendipity Berry, a which was well-known there, but almost no-where else – until now.
What more could you ask for? Lots more!
First and foremost, it ‘dramatically’ reduces the amount of added sugar in processed foods. A single teaspoon / 5 mg of Sweelin replaces 26 lb / 12 kg of cane sugar. The effects are particularly advant-ageous for makers of sweetened beverages and condiments.
And that 26 lb/ 12 kg of sugar costs the planet 6,340 gal / 14.000 L of process water to make – none of which is needed to make make Sweelin!
Let’s not forget one really important point: Sweelin is not a sugar, chemically. It’s a protein, and as such is virtually calorie-free. That also means it’s not burdened with the chemistry and the attendant health doubts other artificial sweeteners share.
For the food processing industry, Sweelin may represent a major saving on sweetener costs. If it can fit in with their processing systems. Commercial food manufacturing equipment is now designed to add a lot of sugar to a lot of other ingredients at a time. Can the production lines be adapted to add just a smidgen of Sweelin while making sure it gets even distributed throughout a whole batch of product mixture?
Not ready for ‘prime time’
Alas, Sweelin is not yet ready for the full range of food preparation methods and measures. Just a few grains of the pure stuff in crystalline form would be overload in the average cake recipe or jug of lemonade!
My take
But we can hope that the maker, Amai proteins, will market a ‘diluted’ version we can dispense via an eye-dropper, or a dry version bulked-up with some innocuous substance which will enable home cooks and restaurant chefs to use the stuff the usual way, employing classic culinary measurements.
~ Maggie J.