Recently, in the large team of ethnic botany of the Kunming Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, The Du Zhizhi research team has discovered a variety of sweet plants for different ethnic groups to eat and medicinal through the field investigation of the ethnic botany of edible and medicinal plants in the main ethnic minority areas in Yunnan, combined with the evaluation of taste sensory senses, and conducted in-depth research on the relevant components of two sweet plants. For a long time, people have maintained great interest in finding high-sweet, low-calorie or non-nutritive sucrose alternatives – especially safe, calorie-free, non-nutritive natural and efficient sweeteners, which are an important part of the research field of food additives in various countries.
Winged fruit vine
The wing fruit vine of the genus Romox is a plant eaten and medicinal by ethnic minorities such as the Yao people in Yunnan, locally known as licorice or large pair of knots, the peel can be used to pickle pickles, and the root has anti-inflammatory, lung-moistening, cough-suppressing effects, and its peel and root have a sweet taste, but there is no relevant report of the sweet ingredients it contains. Through taste activity tracking isolation, the researchers found 10 new sweetster steroid glycoside compounds from the peel of the winged fruit vine. When these new compounds were evaluated using human sensory evaluation models, they were found to be 50 to 400 times sweeter than sucrose. In addition, they isolated and identified 12 new compounds from the root part of the plant, seven of which were new highly effective sweetening compounds with sweetness ranging from 25 to 400 times that of sucrose.
There are many natural plants with sweet taste and low calorie, and the three natural sweeteners to be introduced next also have the advantages of high sweetness and low calorie, or will be more widely used in the future.
Sweet Tea Extract (Sweet Tea Glycosides)
Sweet tea is a new variety of plants of the genus Rosaceae that began to be found as a drug in China in the early eighties. Sweet tea has been used in the folk for a long time, often used to replace sucrose processing food, as a folk medicine for kidney blood pressure reduction, known as the sacred tea, and luo han guo and so on.
The glycosides enriched in sweet tea are diterpenoid glycosomals that are chemically similar to steviol, and they are all composed of the same glycosides, the difference between the two is only that in the ten carbon positions of the sweet tea glycosides there is less than one molecule of glucose. The sweetness of sweet tea glycosides is 300 times that of sucrose, and the calorific value is only 5% of sucrose, which is a natural sweet substance with high sweetness and low calorific energy.
Sweet tea glycosides can activate human insulin, synthesize blood sugar, and have a good health care effect on patients with diabetes and kidney deficiency. The sweet tea glycoside extracted from sweet tea is the best taste among sweet plants, and shows good economic value in various industries such as food, beverages, cold food products, condiments, pharmaceutical industry, beauty and cosmetics because of its green nature, health care and low heat.
It is worth mentioning that the website of the National Health and Family Planning Commission recently accepted sweet tea as a new food raw material, and this plant extract will get more room for development after passing.
Orange peel extract (neohesperidin)
Neohesperidin is a natural new nutritional sweetener extracted from citrus fruit, and its hydrogenated new hesperidin dihydrochaldone, the sweetness is 1500-2000 times that of sucrose, widely used in fruit juices, fruit wine, beverages, pastries and pharmaceutical formulas of sweeteners.
The combination of new hesperidin and other sweeteners can produce a strong synergistic effect, which can improve sweetness, reduce the amount of sweetener, reduce costs, and make the sweetness more pure. The addition of neomethyl hesperidin dihydrochalone to carbonated beverages can improve defects such as acidity, astringency and poor taste of the product. At the same time, NHDC does not carry out caloric conversion in the body, is a low caloric value sweetener, and has physiological activities such as hypoglycemic, cholesterol-lowering, and antioxidant. It is especially suitable for use as a sugar substitute in health foods such as functional foods, health supplements, and dietary supplements.
Licorice extract (glycyrrhizin)
Glycyrrhizin is a triterpenoid active ingredient extracted from the roots and stems of licorice plants, which has the characteristics of high sweetness, low calorie, safety and non-toxicity, and has anti-inflammatory, antiviral, anti-allergic, immunomodulatory and other effects. In recent years, glycyrrhizin has been widely used in medicine, food, cosmetics and other industries, with the gradual expansion of the artificial planting area of licorice, the extraction of licorice as a natural sweetener and health food, has been the attention of many scholars at home and abroad.
The glycyrrhizinate in glycyrrhizin plays a major role in sweetness. Among them, the sweetness of monokalum glycyrrhizinate is 500 times that of sucrose, the sweetness of dipotassium glycyrrhizinate and potassium trikalate is 150 times that of sucrose, and the sweetness of ammonium glycyrrhizinate is 200 times that of sucrose. Generally, the glycyrrhizic acid and its salt extracted from licorice are 50 to 100 times sweeter than the mixture of sucrose. Compared with sweeteners such as sucrose, protein glycoprotein, steviol, and saccharin, the sweetness of licorice is slow and has a long shelf life. Mixed with sucrose, it helps to play a sweet taste and can save sucrose, and when mixed with steviol, it has a synergistic effect on sweetness and can eliminate its bad aftertaste. In addition, licorice sweetener has a unique flavor, and when used together with table salt, it can ease the taste of salt, enhance the flavoring effect, and produce a full and soft taste.
The calorific value of licorice is almost zero, which can be widely used as a sweetener for low-calorie foods, mixed with other low-calorific value sweeteners, and can replace sucrose to produce low-calorific value health foods suitable for obesity and diabetic patients. In addition, glycyrrhizin is a natural compound extracted from plants and is listed as a "recognized safe substance" by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).