The popularity of artificial sweeteners has skyrocketed because they enable individuals to consume sweets without consuming calories.
It’s obvious that people adore their sweet pleasures from the large range of sodas, candies, and baked products that are sold worldwide. However, using artificial sweeteners or white table sugar in excess might have negative effects on your health.
Researches looking for a superior sweetener have now published findings in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
The low-calorie mixture is as sweet as table sugar and, in lab tests, nourishes “healthy” gut microorganisms. However, research on both humans and animals suggests that some of them may enhance hunger, which could result in increased food consumption and weight gain in addition to other harmful health effects.
As a result, scientists have started looking into low-calorie or extraordinarily sweet compounds derived from natural sources as potential replacements.
Galactooligosaccharides, which are low-calorie sugars with prebiotic properties that can serve as a source of energy for good gut bacteria, are one such example. However, they are not nearly sweet enough to completely replace table sugar. As an alternative, mogrosides chemicals found in luo han guo fruit extracts are 200–300 times sweeter than table sugar. However, these extracts occasionally contain bad flavours that can be eliminated using enzymes.
F. Javier Moreno and colleagues used enzymes to modify mogrosides while simultaneously creating galactooligosaccharides for a novel low-calorie sweetener in order to benefit from the greatest features of both natural compounds. Starting with lactose and mogroside V, the researchers (the primary mogrosidein luo han guo fruit), researchers obtained a mixture that primarily comprised galactooligosaccharides and a tiny amount of modified mogrosides after adding -galactosidase enzymes.
The new mixture was described by a trained sensory panel as having a sweetness resembling sucrose (table sugar), suggesting that consumers would find it tolerable. The novel sweetener enhanced levels of several advantageous human gut microorganisms, including the bacterial species Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus, in test tube studies.
Increases in metabolites generated by bacteria including acetate, propionate, and butyrate further suggested that the mixture might have a prebiotic effect on the gut flora.
The novel sweetener is promising, according to the researchers, and their next step will be to more thoroughly examine the substance’s effects on gut health in people.
Parvathy Sukumaran 
