Less harmful sugar? More efficient sweet silica could ‘shake up’ the food industry

The surprising truth about cake is that it’s astonishingly inefficient.

So are lollipops, pies, sticks of gum, and cookies, each an imperfect vehicle used to deliver the sweet sensation people crave. And these foods are loaded with sugar.
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[S]ugar molecules have to land on our sweet-tasting receptors, most of which sit on the tip of the tongue. But sugar is notoriously bad at actually hitting those receptors, so bad that only 20% actually makes it, the rest washing down our gullets and into the digestive system. This is one reason why many foods contain so much sugar.

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Enter DouxMatok, a small Israeli startup with aims of shaking up the global sugar market …. [The Company has] created …. a pathway to reducing the sugar in their products while keeping tastes the same.

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Food-grade silica is commonly found in lots of foods …. The scientists at DouxMatok like using it for two reasons. The first is that it’s porous …. and can be filled with smaller sugar molecules. The second reason is that silica is really good at finding its way to our taste buds.

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When sugar-loaded silica hits saliva, it’s able to diffuse more effectively than sugar molecules alone, which gives it a better chance at hitting the taste buds on our tongues ….

Read full, original article: A tiny tweak to sugar is about to make the world’s sweets a lot healthier