Sugar and Sweeteners

Sugar is composed of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. It is used as a natural food stuff to sweeten the majority of other food stuffs that we wish to taste sweet. Monosaccharides is the simplest form of sugar. Sugar can be found in the tissues of plants before sugar use, honey was used to add sweetness to our foods. Sweeteners, rather than being a food stuff is a food additive. High intensity sweeteners, are a lot sweeter than sugar that we use everyday that does not contain the same level of food energy. Sweeteners can be natural or synthetic the majority are artificial. Sorbitol is a natural sweetener whereas saccharin, created by accident in 1879 is an artificial sweetener. Sweeteners can take the place of natural sugar, where the consumption of natural sugar may be detrimental to our health, such as diabetes sufferers. Canada banned the use of saccharin in 1977 as tests in relation to bladder cancer from the 1960's showed that their may be a link to bladder cancer of users of high dies of saccharin, also these tests involved the use of animals.