Allulose

Low Calorie Sugar

Allulose and Sugar Reduction  

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As rates of obesity and diabetes rise across the US and around the world, more and more people are looking for low-calorie and low-sugar versions of their favorite foods to help them control their weight without sacrificing what they enjoy eating.

In the most recent version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which is developed by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), it is recommended that adults and children limit their intake of sugars, especially added sugars. The Guidelines recommend consuming less than ten percent of daily calories from added sugars. For someone consuming 2,000 calories per day, this means no more than 200 calories from added sugars, or about 12 teaspoons.

unnamedThe US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is also working to revise the Nutrition Facts Panel on food and beverage labels. One of the proposed recommendations is to label the amount of added sugars in a product. The FDA has also proposed a percent daily value (%DV) for added sugars of ten percent, a value which is mimicked in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

One way to help lower consumption of sugary foods and beverages is by looking out for products made with low-calorie sweeteners. One such sweetener is allulose, a low calorie sugar with about one-tenth the calories of regular sugar. This negligible amount of calories is due to the fact that allulose is not completely metabolized by the body.

While allulose has fewer calories than sugar, it is still classified as a carbohydrate and a sugar. Therefore, the presence of allulose in a product will affect the amount of carbohydrates and sugar listed on product labels. However, it should be noted that though the number of grams of carbohydrates and sugars might look similar to a full-sugar product, the amount of calories will be reduced when allulose is used in place of some or all of the sugar content of the product.

For more information about allulose, please see our Frequently Asked Questions page.

Four Simple Ways to a Healthier Lifestyle

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Living healthy feels like a constant topic of conversation. People are always interested in the latest trend to lead to a healthier way of living, but sometimes all you need to start is the basics. Behavioral changes in diet and physical activity can often be hard but with these four basic and simple tips, you too will be able to take the leap into a healthier lifestyle! [Read more…]

In the Search for the Perfect Sugar Substitute, Another Candidate Emerges — NPR, National Public Radio

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There’s a new candidate in the century-old quest for perfect, guiltless sweetness.

I encountered it at the annual meeting of the Institute of Food Technologists, a combination of Super Bowl, Mecca, and Disneyland for the folks who put the processing in processed food.

…There are plenty of low-calorie sugar substitutes. But Harrison says most of them wouldn’t work in this ice cream. Because sugar, and allulose, do more than deliver sweetness: They also keep the ice cream from freezing solid.

Continue Reading at NPR

Popular Protein Bar Company Invites Die-Hard Fans to Invent the Future — Food Navigator

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When Nick Robinson joined a certain wellness food company in January 2011, it had just sold its first protein bar. “The world didn’t know who we were,” he says. “But they were about to.” Five years later, the company is valued at more than a billion dollars, and Robinson is spearheading a new initiative inviting its biggest fans to help shape the company’s new product development strategy.

Quest Labs is also a great place to test out new ingredients such as allulose, a sweetener Quest is using in a new product on trial at Quest Labs.

A new, ultra low-calorie sweetener that is found naturally in jackfruit and raisins, but is being made in commercial quantities via the enzymatic conversion of corn, allulose has 70% of the sweetness of table sugar, but 90% fewer calories (it’s absorbed by the body but not metabolized).

Continue Reading at Food Navigator

Understanding Food Nutrition Labels

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No matter your health status, understanding what that Nutrition Facts label is really telling you is critical to knowing if the product in your hand is right for you.. When looking at this label many people will only look at one piece of information. For example, some people only look at total carbohydrates, some   look for the item with the least amount of total fat and others look only at the calories. Many consumers don’t understand that all the information included on the label works together and is equally important when making a decision about what you take home with you.

[Read more…]