Amid the headlines about beverage makers removing sugar here and adding it back there, science has moved forward. Researchers say they’ve found a new, cheap, abundant, low-Calorie, low-glucose sugar replacement – in slime mould…
Actually, the sweetener has been known for some time. But researchers from Tufts University recently discovered an easier, more economical way to extract the substance from the original plant form (see photo, top of page).
According to the Introduction to the study report, “D-Tagatose (tagatose) is one such rare natural sweetener that is 9 percent as sweet as sucrose, and contains approximately one-third of the calories.”
Expensive and difficult
But up to now, production of the sweetener has been expensive and difficult, limiting its deployment.
“As with many low-calorie natural sweeteners, large-scale production of tagatose is limited only by its scarcity in nature, inefficient synthesis methods that suffer from low yields and purity, or feed-stock limitations.”
But the Tufts team says it’s overcome those objections. And tagatose could soon be ready for mass production.
“Given its similar physical properties to sugar and GRAS approval (‘generally recognized as safe’) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), tagatose is an attractive sweetener candidate for use in a variety of consumer products.”
Future considerations
Tagatose may just be the gateway to a furue where traditional sugars are replaced by new sweeteners which are healthier in all respects.
“Beyond its immediate application to tagatose, our pathway provides a generalizable framework for the biosynthesis of galactose-derived molecules directly from glucose,” the Tufts team concludes. “This system provides a foundation for cost-effective, scalable production of galactose-derived products and a new starting point for future engineering of rare sugar pathways.”
My take
Glucose is one of the simplest sugars on the planet. It’s everywhere in the processed food universe. And it’s also the chief antagonist in obesity, type 2 diabetes and other (literally) gut-wrenching con-ditions. Talk about an image makover! If large scale systems to render glucose into tagatose actually work…
If we can replace table sugar, glucose, fructose and other traditional sugars with tagatose and its still-to-be-commercialized kin, we could revolutionize the treatment of any number of today’s most obnoxious and pervasive diseases…
~ Maggie J.