DailyDirt: How Sweet It Is?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

We've been following diet fads for a while now -- and seeing how sugar (in various forms) has been blamed for health problems. Artificial sweeteners are supposed to help us avoid consuming too much sugar (and be more healthy in the balance), but it's probably not surprising that studies are starting to show that these alternatives to sugar also have their own side effects.

• Aspartame is being removed from Pepsi products, but it's still in thousands of other items that people eat and drink. Aspartame is one of the most studied food additives, and there isn't much evidence that it causes health problems such as cancer -- although phenylketonurics should stay away from it (as well as phenylalanine or anything that turns into phenylalanine). [url]
• Sucrose (aka table sugar) is a reference on the sweetness scale with a value of 1.0, and other natural sugars such as fructose can be a bit sweeter (1.1-1.8). Other naturally-occurring compounds like chloroform and stevia are orders of magnitude sweeter than sucrose, but you probably don't want to ingest chloroform. Lugduname is one of the sweetest compounds known, estimated to be over 200,000 times sweeter than sucrose, but it's not approved as a food additive (yet). People throughout history have been poisoned by sweet toxins (eg. lead acetate), but hopefully we'll avoid a similar fate. [url]
• Artificial sweeteners might reduce the calories a person consumes (depending on how much a person actually consumes), but these additives may also alter the microbiome in the digestive system, making some people less able to control blood sugar levels. It's still uncertain what the net effect of artificial sweeteners might be on any particular individual, but it's probably not as easy as you might think it is to eliminate all added sugar and artificial sweeteners from your diet. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: artificial sweeteners, aspartame, diabetes, diet, food, food additive, lugduname, microbiome, phenylketonurics, stevia, sucrose, sugar, taste
Companies: pepsi

DailyDirt: Cooking Up Something New...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The science of food has led to some pretty important discoveries as modern technology is applied to more and more food processing techniques. While some folks are suspicious of foods that have indefinite shelf lives, being able to avoid billions of tons of food waste can't be all bad. Here are just a few quick links on some interesting food findings.

• Food scientists now know that the melting point of sucrose depends on how fast you heat it. Apparently, sugar decomposes with heat, and knowing this, researchers could develop tastier candies or better pharmaceuticals. [url]
• Some harmless bacteria in the human gut produce bisin -- which could be the next "organic" food preservative. Bisin kills off stuff like E. coli, salmonella and listeria -- and could allow foods like meat, dairy and eggs to go unspoiled for years. [url]
• Would you really want to eat a chili pepper that requires protective gear to harvest? The secret to growing them could be "worm juice" in the fertilizer. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: bisin, chili, food, preservative, science, sucrose