The triumph of replacing sugar did not really come.
Wen 丨 Zhu Kailin
Edited by 丨 Huang Junjie
Drinks should be "0 sugar 0 calories", juices, cakes, rice... Never touch it. Urbanites who advocate sugar abstinence are opposed to all sugary foods. In the new round of popular culture, sugar is not only directed to obesity, but also associated with aging. A large number of beauty bloggers promote anti-sugar life, saying it is the secret of eternal youth.
The aversion to sugar is so popular that not long ago, Yan Weimin, chairman of the China Sugar Industry Association, said in a report that sugar has been "demonized" and that people "ignore the naturalness and safety of sugar and emphasize guilt instead."
Breakthrough from the "perfect substitute" for sugar , erythritol , a sweetener that is completely calorie-free and tastes closer to sucrose than other sugar substitutes.
After the success of the Yuanqi Forest Sparkling Water with "erythritol", the new beverage products worth tens of billions of dollars turned in the same direction. Sugar factories aggressively expanded production of "erythritol", and beverage packaging printed with "0 sugar, 0 calories, 0 fats" filled the shelves of convenience stores.
In the face of the health crisis caused by sugar, sweeteners have indeed made great progress, but the price paid is difficult to detect. Gradually, to what extent sweet is equal to unhealthy, the taste buds have lost their judgment.
The bitterness of erythritol
In an industrial park in Binzhou, Shandong Province, several huge metal fermentation tanks containing glucose work day and night. With the participation of special yeasts, half of the sugar in the jar will turn into erythritol, creating a huge profit.
Using a special yeast, six-carbon glucose can be degraded into four-carbon erythritol. In the process, the yeast gets the energy it needs to grow, "and we humans get erythritol." A research and development staff of a sugar company said, "This is similar to how we make beer and liquor." ”
The person who owns the factory is Nie Zaijian, who is 71 years old. In 2008, he ran a textile company, Sanyuan Home Textiles. The financial crisis affected clothing exports, and Nie Zaijian thought of an unpopular sugar fermentation process he had seen in Japan. He later explained why he decided to enter the sugar industry: the principle of textile printing and dyeing was heating, modulating colors, obtaining cloth, and the sugar process had similarities that he felt familiar with.
Sanyuan Home Textile, now called Sanyuan Bio, produces 85,000 tons of erythritol per year. On February 10, 2022, Sanyuan Bio was listed on the Gem And became a company on the cusp.
In this wave of sugar-free boom, the biggest span is the supplier of Yuanqi Forest, the veteran sugar factory Bowling Bao, from the source of the production of calories to a staunch supporter of sugar-free.
Under the supervision of founder Liu Zongli, Bowling Began to enter the supply chain of multinational companies in 2001 and became a supplier to Nestlé. In 2004, after three years of inspection, Coca-Cola listed Bowling As the only supplier of fructose glucose syrup in China. The Coke Sprite you once drank is so sweet, which is the credit of this company. Fructose syrup is cheaper than sucrose, and most soft drink companies have used it more than sucrose. In recent years, Bowling's growth has slowed alongside Coca-Cola until they start producing erythritol.
According to the company's performance forecast disclosed in mid-December, Bowling's net profit in 2021 increased by 281%-321% year-on-year, thanks to the two booming supply and demand of erythritol products, and the price increase was obvious. Last year, Bowling Po began planning to invest in a 30,000-ton capacity project after the new capacity of 13,000 tons of erythritol was put into operation. Driven by interests, more companies joined. In May 2021, Huakang Pharmaceutical held a board meeting, and the shareholders unanimously decided to stop the original "Viscose Fiber Pressing Fluid Industrialization Project" and raise funds to invest in the erythritol production line with an annual output of 30,000 tons.
Most of these erythritols are dissolved in beverages labeled "0 sugar 0 calories" and sold quickly, making it difficult to distinguish it from sucrose — and the close taste of sucrose is also its selling point. After the beverage market accepted erythritol, Chinese merchants and sugar mills quickly set their sights on the retail market.
In August 2021, Bowling Treasure invested in startup Hero Zero, and the first one released was the "zero card sugar" known as 1:1 white sugar.
I placed an order for a packet with a very fine white powder, more like salt. The ingredient list reads: erythritol, trehalose, monk fruit glycosides, steviol glycosides.
Taking a little by hand and putting it in your mouth, the difference between "zero card sugar" and sucrose was immediately apparent: just touching the tongue, it was a strange cool feeling, and then it was sweet. This cooling sensation is precisely the characteristic of erythritol, which is why it is very suitable for drinks. But the developers are obviously not satisfied with this, and behind the packaging is written that the use scenarios include brewing, baking, cooking, and cold mixing.
In cafes in European and American markets, small packets of sugar substitutes for people to pick up are a common sight, but these sugar substitutes are generally only used for coffee and tea.
With a skeptical attitude, I made braised pork with this bag of sugar, and the taste was not satisfactory: the color of the meat was obviously very light (no dark soy sauce), it did not achieve the effect of white sugar coloring, and the aroma of the meat was also very flat, but it was indeed sweet.
Later, I learned that erythritol has heat-absorbing properties, so it produces a cool taste. It can withstand long-term heating, and aspartame with cola zero cannot, but "erythritol is very difficult to color, even if you bake the temperature very high, it is not a Maillard reaction, but a color change produced by degradation, and there will be no aroma after the Maillard reaction of protein and sugar." A sugar mill R&D worker explains.
A month after the launch of this product, it is the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2021. Some netizens began to have diarrhea after eating mooncakes with erythritol.
In order to vividly illustrate the difference in the taste of different sweeteners and sucrose, a beverage company's product developer drew three parabolas in an interview, "The middle one is the sweet feeling that sucrose brings to us, which is balanced and full." ”
Figure: How long does sucrose and various sweeteners stay in a population
Then he drew another parabola on the left. "The one on the left is erythritol for yuanqi sparkling water, which can feel sweet immediately after entering the mouth, and has a cool taste, but this sweetness will soon dissipate."
Then there's the right. "The one on the right, a high-power sweetener like steviol glycosides, their sweetness stays in the mouth for a long time." (Once, Dr. Xia Yixun of Jiangnan University accidentally inhaled a little sucralose powder in order to do experiments, and until she fell asleep at night, she still had a sweet smell in her throat that she could not swallow.) ）
There have been candy companies that have tried to make fudge with erythritol and found that it will precipitate into fine particles in the candy. This is because erythritol has a lower solubility than sucrose.
In the early days of the development of Yuanqi Forest Sparkling Water, there was a version that only added erythritol and did not add sucralose. At that time, the R & D staff had found other colleagues to try drinks, I don't know if it is related to the career direction, a colleague who makes yogurt has abnormal intestinal function, and after drinking a whole bottle, he diarrhea. The final sparkling water on the market reduces erythritol dosage and is supplemented with the highly sweetener sucralose.
"Bliss Point" fails
Around people's natural preferences for sweetness, the food industry has established a methodology over the past few decades: Numerous consumer studies have proven that there is a fixed range of added sugars in food and beverages, and that consumers' taste buds will be satisfied as long as they reach that range. The food industry is guided by this theory to skillfully grab profits. But over the past few years, companies in the Chinese market have found that their judgment of sweetness has gradually failed.
In December 2017, Yili launched a new brand of "Plant Selection", which focuses on strong flavored soy milk. At that time, Yili Chairman Pan Gang was laying out "multiple categories across the field of big health", emulating Nestle and Danone, which started with the dairy industry, and developing beyond dairy products.
That year, Darley's bean milk grew rapidly, reaching nearly 1 billion in sales in 2017. Analysts at China Merchants Securities predicted in an industry report that the soy milk industry will show "J" growth.
"In the first year, plant selection actually sold well as a new product. The company's expectations for it are also great. A former Yili employee told LatePost that Yili hopes to choose a large single product with annual sales of tens of billions.
Generally speaking, Yili's new products are not likely to iterate immediately after listing, but plant selection has been listed for half a year, and the formula has been adjusted. Because in a new product post-test, consumers and shopping guides generally feedback that the taste of planted soy milk is sweet. The source said, "I guess it should be that the management also feels sweet." ”
Before the listing of Zhixuan, Yili had done a lot of consumer research. R & D personnel will provide several samples of soy milk of different concentrations and sweetness, packed in a 100 ml tasting cup, allowing consumers to blindly test. At the time most people opted for the sweeter version.
Later, the plant selection team concluded that in the case of only one sip, the sweeter formula can always capture most people, but a bottle of 250 ml of sweet soy milk is a bit too greasy. In the end, they decided to reduce the original 5% white sugar content by 10%.
After years of development of the food and beverage industry, how much sugar is added to various foods will make consumers addicted, and it has long been fixed to a rough value after scientific experiments. The first to delve into this was the American Howard Moskowitz, a food scientist who worked as a consultant in the labs of major food giants in the 1980s. Moskowitz found that people's preference for food increases as sugar increases until it reaches a peak. At the top of this inverted U-shaped curve is the so-called "bliss point," or "optimal sensory habit."
"We all know that 0.2% salt is the most palatable range for people; sweetness is better than 4% sugar in neutral drinks. Acidic drinks like Coke use a lot of sugar to neutralize, and the more acidic it is, the sweeter it is. Ye Suping, a beverage R&D practitioner, told LatePost.
In 2016, Ye Joined a startup and was given the first task of configuring a soda sweetener combination. The responsible product manager clearly stated that the taste should be standard cola, but it must not be as sweet as cola. This soda is the Yuanqi Forest sparkling water that later became a hit. "The sweetness of cola is 11%, the sweetness of yuanqi sparkling water is 7%, and the corresponding acidity is reduced to 7%-8%." Ye Suping said that many domestic beverage companies are now doing models in this regard in order to quantify the changed taste of consumers.
The above-mentioned sweetening of Yili Plant Selection is just the beginning of many modifications to this product. Later, developers finally realized that people are willing to drink soy milk because they think it is nutritious, and such consumers are often sensitive to sugar today. In the end, Yili decided to completely eliminate sucrose and add high protein in 2020, promoting "natural sweetness derived from plants" instead.
Unbreakable sucrose
The earliest company in China to try erythritol is not Yuanqi Forest, but Yili.
An employee of Bowling Po revealed that at that time, Bao LingBao was planning to open up the domestic market of erythritol, and initially they targeted dairy companies. Internal evaluations believe that dairy companies are innovating faster than beverage companies, and if they can persuade Ilimon Bull to launch related products, they can become a benchmark and detonate the market for this sugar substitute.
In March 2015, Yili's lactic acid bacteria drink "Every YiTian" launched a low-sugar version with erythritol introduced in the formula. Yili asked Yang Mi to endorse him, and also made a package of the Kung Fu Panda version. But according to people familiar with the matter, after the dealer conference ended in 2015, Yili decided to cancel the product and change back to the raw sugar version.
"This product didn't push up, and 2015 gave us a huge blow." The Bowling Pal employee said. On the one hand, lactic acid bacteria drinks have high acidity, in order to neutralize the taste, per 100 grams of each yitian or add about 5 grams of sucrose; on the other hand, the cost of erythritol is higher, and enterprises also have concerns about it.
Previously, healthy, sugar-free foods were not only unpalatable, but also expensive. Because sugar not only provides sweetness, but also a natural, low-cost food preservative, and a binder in desserts. If sugar is not used, these functions need to be replaced by other raw materials. Even if the company is ruthless, spends the cost, and is willing to subvert its own successful products, it is often difficult to completely give up the sugar.
"Sugar is the most important filler." A former Mars China R&D manager said there are different grades of sugar that can be used to optimize the production process of the product and thus reduce costs. For example, a rainbow sugar, in the first part of the appearance to contact the tongue with better primary sugar, the core of the sugar core to use the inferior secondary sugar, you can save the company about 3% of the cost.
Many sweeteners do not have the "stickiness" of sucrose. An insider said that there is another hidden flaw in the Yuanqi Forest sparkling water, which is caused by sugar substitutes: after opening the bottle cap, the air runs very fast. She once did a comparative experiment, and a bottle of Coke was opened for an hour, which was obviously more sufficient than the breath of sparkling water. This is because the sugar in cola is sticky and better retains bubbles.
It is precisely because sugar has always been so well-behaved, pleasant, inexpensive, and plays multiple roles that food companies are reluctant to abandon them. Even when innovating, they tend to change fewer options.
In 2018, food giant Nestlé launched a low-sugar version of the chocolate bar Milkybar Wowsomes, which is wrapped in milk chocolate and has a crunchy filling on the inside. Nestlé applied a "pneumatic porous sugar" that they had worked so hard to develop on this product, which reduced the amount of sugar used by about 1/3 by modifying the shape of the sugar molecules and increasing the strength of the tongue's perception of sweetness.
Nestlé's chief technology officer, Stephen Cassikas, said at the time: "We wanted to use less sugar but keep the same level of sweetness. ”
As a result, by 2020, Nestlé has cut this undersold product. One view is that it fails because a 30% sugar cut does not satisfy consumer appetites.
An Israeli startup, DouxMatok, goes a step further than Nestlé and reduces sugar by 40%. The company has so far raised $30 million in financing and has signed cooperation agreements with some of the largest sugar companies in Europe and the United States. Eran Baniel, the founder in his seventies, described the white crystals his father invented as "a better sugar." Although it is 99% structurally identical to sucrose, the addition of silicon dioxide increases the surface area of the sugar molecules to saliva, thereby enhancing people's perception of sweetness.
The closer it is to sucrose, the more it can exert its original various effects. DouxMatok claims that their products can be used in baking, an area that most sweeteners can't yet touch.
But it didn't take long for this new sugar to be planted in front of the sponge cake. Some pastry chefs have found it difficult to achieve the same fluffiness when making cakes with white sugar – don't forget, sugar is also part of the volume of the cake. In this case, it is necessary to add dietary fiber to the formula to fill in the missing quality. Many customers have encountered similar problems in the process of practical application, in the words of Barnier, "Our sugar needs a nanny." ”
New attempts are often more expensive and can publicly jeopardize the main businesses of these large companies.
In the book "Pure, White and Deadly," nutritionist Yudkin mentions a clip that reveals the two-sided tangled style of food and beverage companies in the face of health trends.
In the early 1980s, aspartame, a sweetener that was later widely used in Diet Coke, was about to receive government approval in several countries. At this time, the manufacturer of aspartame, Sillie Pharmaceutical Company of the United States, approached Yudkin and wanted to sponsor him to organize a conference to discuss the nutritional problems of carbohydrates, on the condition that a session was arranged at the meeting to introduce the newly introduced aspartame.
Yudkin had been preparing for months, but the meeting had to be cancelled temporarily two weeks before it was convened. It turned out that coca-cola, which was preparing to purchase a large quantity of aspartame, demanded a halt, fearing that the content of the meeting to the public would be detrimental to the sales of sugary classic cola.
Fifty years ago, it was widely believed in Western societies that excessive intake of fat was responsible for the high incidence of coronary heart disease, and sugar and carbohydrates provided "positive energy." As the first scientist to discover and propose that "eating more sugar is harmful", Yudkin was depressed under the siege of the sugar industry and the suppression of academic peers.
Decades later, Yudkin's views on sugar have become the consensus. But his warning is clearly more permanent: "Our access to more information has long been sifted through, leaving us with the illusion of free choice." After the truth that sugar equals unhealth was discovered, they still developed new magic tricks.
From mineral water, to small sweet water
Before the advent of erythritol, the food industry's most straightforward way of thinking about consumer tastes was to offer a "slightly less sweet" option. They fear that if sugar is removed altogether, consumers will abandon themselves.
The one who gives this hint is the Taiwan milk tea shop. In 2007, a little bit of milk tea (Taiwan's "Igarashi" milk tea) that entered the mainland market was the first to allow consumers to choose 7, 5, 3 or sugar-free when they want psychological comfort. Until today, ready-made milk tea shops have evolved the 0-calorie sugar option, and even a milk tea brand called "7 points sweet" has emerged. The popularity of these milk tea shops clearly tells beverage companies that consumers only control half of their brains and don't want calories, but still want to drink sweets – even though milk, pearls, and fruits of milk tea all have calories.
In 2013, Li Fengqi, then general manager of Suntory China, noticed a subtle change in the beverage market: drinking water sales were picking up. Before that, it was a decade of the rise of various seemingly healthy but sugar-rich beverages in the Chinese market, fruit oranges, nutrition expresses, Wang Laoji... Consumers are drinking sweeter and sweeter, and the proportion of drinking water is decreasing year by year.
Suntory has been selling sugar-free oolong tea in China for 20 years, rarely launching sweet to hair-raising products because it is mainly a cola, Master Kong, and a unified market. Li Fengqi believes that the re-acquisition of drinking water may be a major opportunity – by the first quarter of 2015, the proportion of water in the country's beverage production had risen from 46% two years ago to more than 50%. Does this mean that people are fed up with sweet drinks and decide to drink more water? He then decided to make a light-tasted, water-close drink, which was later sold as a liquor.
Unified words of the sea, Coca-Cola hydrodynamic music, Master Kong's sea crystal lemon, nongfu spring tea π... These relatively light-tasting beverages have a similar development idea, and they are classified as "near-water drinks". Even the Genki Forest with bubbles is included.
A person familiar with the matter said that Coca-Cola China found in an earlier survey that a large part of the scene where consumers buy Yuanqi Forest sparkling water is actually not replacing Coca-Cola with it, but as a substitute for drinking water.
Pictured: Coca-Cola's near-water category products
The exploration of near-water beverages has led Chinese beverage companies to a key conclusion: "sweet" is still a powerful weapon, and "slight sweetness" can create an environment that makes people let their guard down. And the next question is, how much to drop, how to drop?
Since about four years ago, a number of Chinese food and beverage companies and Jiangnan University have cooperated to study the "sensory cognition of sweetness", understand the taste characteristics of various sugars, sugar substitutes themselves and the combination of these substances, and find sugar reduction and sugar substitute solutions that can perfectly replace sucrose in different types of foods.
There is a trend in academia and industry alike that how much sugar should be added to food and beverage has gone from a less controversial topic to an uncharted territory. Professor Zhong Fang of the Food College of Jiangnan University said that determining the sugar substitute program is undoubtedly a difficult point in the design of sugar-reducing products, but another question that arises when determining the sugar reduction/ sugar substitution scheme seems to be more difficult to answer: Do you want to reduce sweetness? "Some consumers will say, since you lower the sugar, then you have to reduce the sweetness? And some other consumers will think that sugar substitute is to replace the original sweetness, otherwise why sugar substitute? ”
An early employee of Yuanqi Forest revealed that before the birth of Yuanqi Forest Sparkling Water, there was another "Balanced Water" being developed at the same time, which was not finally listed. The recipe of "Balanced Water" is very close to the airless sparkling water: water, with the sweetener "erythritol" to provide sweetness, plus a little juice and lemon flavor to provide flavor. According to "LatePost", later this "balanced water" was abandoned because the production process was too restrictive, but from the "balance water" it can be seen that including sparkling water, the research and development ideas of Yuanqi Forest inherited the mantle of near-water drinks a few years ago, the only difference is that "erythritol" replaced sugar, so it can be declared "0 sugar 0 calorie".
The mystery of sensory science is that consumer perception is susceptible to a variety of factors. Dr. Xia Yixun of Jiangnan University designed an experiment: in two cups of solution with the same sweetness, one bottle was labeled with the "sugar substitute" logo and the other bottle was labeled with the "sugar reduction" logo, and some consumers tended to think that the bottle with the "sugar substitute" was sweeter than the one with the "sugar reduction".
This experiment means that assuming that claiming "sugar substitutes" makes people feel sweeter, then companies can reduce the amount of sugar substitutes added to achieve the same sweetness and reduce costs.
Is it really wise to repeatedly fool our taste buds, pancreas, and brains with sugar substitutes? "Overall, sugar is worse than sweeteners." Dr. Ford Brewer, who has served as chief medical officer at several global companies, noted in an article on how sugar substitutes affect blood sugar and insulin that there are many related studies that warn of the potential risks of sweeteners, such as probiotic reductions that could lead to a reduction in the guts of experimental mice. His advice is that if you're a sweetener, you can overdo it. "So far, stevia and erythritol are considered the safest, but both are new sweeteners, so there is not much medical research on them."
The careful judgment of nutritionists on new sweeteners does not prevent companies from promoting them. Over the past few years, driven by Yuanqi Forest, erythritol has become the hottest sweetener for Chinese food and beverage companies when considering health innovations. Its popularity represents that consumers have identified with such an extreme idea of sugar reduction: as long as the taste is good enough, we can completely separate the sweetness and calories.
The sugar-reducing trend that devours everything
Chinese has three major sources of added sugar intake, dairy products, baked goods, and sugary drinks. In both beverages and dairy products, existing sweeteners are better disguised as sucrose, but when it comes to baking, they surrender.
Bakery products are not only used in large amounts of sugar, but are also high-calorie foods themselves. A founder of a Chinese-style baking brand that was popular last year, after learning about the subject of this report, politely declined the interview with LatePost. The reason is that "we are not considering sugar substitutes for the time being, and desserts are already high-carbon aquatic products." But we do focus on healthy ingredients like oat flour and the like. ”
Most people's taste buds have been domesticated, and bread is not delicious without added sugar. Most sugar substitutes also don't stand up to baking at high temperatures. It's so hard that few people dare to try it. But under the market success call of low-sugar beverages and dairy products, the sugar reduction of baked goods is also quietly happening. According to the summary of Wang Wei, a customer service provider in the Tmall baking industry, the four major trends of baking e-commerce products in the past year are coarse grain, sugar reduction, low fat and oil-free, and natural raw materials.
Xuanma Egg Yolk Puff pastry is a baking brand born in e-commerce, relying on live broadcast room recommendation sales soared. Direct feedback made Xuan Mamos notice earlier consumers' desire to reduce sugar. One day in 2020, Wei Fuxian, the general manager of Xuanma's egg yolk puff pastry, put forward a request to the R&D center: many consumers reported that the egg yolk crisp was too sweet, could it make a low-sugar version?
This task fell to Ji Minyue, a research and development engineer at Xuanma. She first checked the data: less than 5% sugar per 100 grams is declared a low-sugar product. Based on this criterion, she began looking for materials. Her egg yolk pastry consists of four parts: puff pastry, glutinous rice skin, red bean paste, and salted egg yolk, the first three parts are sugary, and the production process of each part is different. Among them, the puff pastry is produced by the company itself, so Ji Minyue has to develop a new recipe on her own.
Initially, the supplier sent a mixed syrup substitute. After trying, Ji Minyue soon found that there was no friction in beating the dough with syrup, and the dough did not rise at all - failure. Then, it was replaced by erythritol granules, which had poor moisture retention, and the dough did not take long to appear honeycomb-shaped. Ji Minyue tried several options, none of which were satisfactory.
A few months later, she tried to mix the two compound sugar substitutes twice, adjusted the oven temperature several times, and actually made a puff pastry that tasted good. The remaining glutinous rice peel and red bean paste need to be consulted by the supplier. One of the main difficulties in overcoming is that the glutinous rice peel must be able to achieve the effect of Q bullets, requiring sugar substitutes to be able to moisturize. "So in the end we added trehalose (a rare sugar extracted from organisms such as shrimp and shiitake mushrooms)."
When he tasted what might be the thirtieth version, Wei Fuxian finally nodded, expressing satisfaction with the taste and sweetness. Compared with the ordinary version, the sugar content of each low-sugar version of Xuanma Egg Yolk Puff pastry is maintained below 3g, which is reduced by nearly 75%, and the sweetness is much lighter. However, the last insurmountable conundrum is shelf life. In the comparative test of the sample retention, Ji Minyue found that the shelf life of the low-sugar egg yolk crisp was significantly shorter, only 20 days.
"But the recipe can't be moved anymore." "Later, we replaced the opaque aluminum film packaging and added a tablet of deoxidizer to extend it to 35 days," she said. ”
The company uses the customer's order to be re-produced as a selling point to ensure the shelf life of the egg yolk crisp. After a few days, I was finally able to taste the low-sugar egg yolk crisp. The texture of the puff pastry is indeed slightly worse than that of ordinary egg yolk puff pastry, but only a little. Overall, it was still delicious and enjoyable. Then I glanced at the ingredient list on the back, which was printed on 6 lines, containing 7 different sugar substitutes, and a wave of anxiety suddenly struck me.
If there is any widely accepted "axiom" in nutrition over the past few decades, the shorter the list of food ingredients and the lower the health risk, it must be one of them. The American writer Michael Pollan, who has a huge influence on the public's dietary cognition, even directly suggested that you should not eat any food with an ingredient list longer than five bars.
A recent study found that taking sucralose 10 minutes before glucose intake strengthens insulin's response to sugar, which may be evidence that our bodies are being fooled. There are also nutritionists who criticize sweeteners from the perspective of behavioral preferences, arguing that whether they contain calories or not, sugar substitutes will make people more and more sweet.
But none of these studies have been observed long enough to overturn the use of sweeteners. At the 2021 Beijing Service Trade Conference, Chen Junshi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a nutrition expert, said at a health consumption forum that there are two feasible ways to reduce sugar, the first is to gradually reduce the amount of sugar added in the product and reduce the sweetness, but this method requires consumers to adapt for a longer time, and the second is to use sweeteners. "For the beverage industry to develop, replacing sugar with sweeteners is a trend."
Over the past few hundred years, humans have built up an understanding of sweetness through sucrose. "Sweet" not only creates a sense of pleasure, but also warns our bodies that sugar is coming. The taste buds signal that the pancreas secretes insulin and the intestines release hormones to allow the blood to absorb glucose. But with the popularity of sugar substitutes, some instincts have been reversed.
However, the market energy brought by "0 sugar, 0 calories" is enough to overcome all kinds of doubts.
In the end, after 50 years of seemingly free choice efforts, people have returned to the producers of food and beverages to define the "health" standard on the issue of eating sugar.