A Sugar By Any Other Name-Allulose Explained!

What’s in a name? A lot, actually—especially if that name represents an ingredient that consumers see every time they read the labels of their favorite foods and beverages. And one of the names consumers increasingly don’t want to read on those labels is that of sugar.

You really can’t blame them: nutritive carbohydrates like sugar are widely held to be culprits in the obesity epidemic, exacerbating a public health crisis through their involvement in conditions ranging from heart disease and type 2 diabetes to, perhaps, even some forms of cancer.

If only the twenty-first-century foodscape weren’t so awash in sugar. But it is, and informed consumers are responding by making a concerted—and laudable—effort to avoid it.

Here’s the catch, though: There’s very little that’s “simple” about simple sugars. Yes, they’re all structural variations on an architecture built from atoms of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. But within those narrow physical and chemical confines, entire worlds of functional, nutritional and metabolic variability exist.

Consider, for example, allulose. It’s a rare sugar that forms naturally when foods are cooked and is found, otherwise, in only one plant: the flowering shrub Itea virginica. Though it comprises the same collection of six carbon, 12 hydrogen and six oxygen atoms that characterize fructose, the mere rearrangement of one oxygen and two hydrogens in allulose makes renders it the mirror image of fructose and—unlike its chiral cousin—virtually invisible to the body’s metabolism. In other words, allulose delivers 90% fewer calories, gram for gram, than garden-variety sugar.

But that’s not the only reason that health professionals, manufacturers and industry watchers alike are excited about allulose. Here are more feathers in its cap:

• In studies, allulose demonstrates no effect on blood glucose levels and—according to some preliminary findings—may even reduce blood glucose levels in diabetics.
• Researchers find that it’s well tolerated and produces no gastrointestinal symptoms.
• FDA grants allulose Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status and sanctions its use in moderate amounts by consumers of all ages.
• Allulose is a practical ingredient whose taste, texture and product performance are on par with other sugars. It can even serve as a one-to-one replacement for high-fructose corn syrup.
• Allulose is not an “artificial sweetener” with the questionable reputation, functionality and sensory profile of saccharin or aspartame. It’s sugar, by another name.
• The FDA says we now do NOT have to list it as an added sugar on the nutrition facts panel (but we do have to list it as a carb)

No wonder The Matsutani Chemical Industry Company is electing—to the tune of tens of millions of dollars—to commercialize and market allulose as an ingredient for food and beverage production. Economies of scale plus production advances have already brought its price below $5 per pound, versus roughly $15 per for the branded sucralose Splenda. Multiple ingredient formats also make the ingredient practical whether a formulation calls for liquid or crystalline sweetener.

So what’s not to like? Once the industry—and consumers—familiarize themselves with allulose, they’ll learn that what’s in its name is the potential for a whole lot of good. And once food scientists see how much fun it is to R&D with, we should be seeing many more products on the market