Tamara Varsos with Professor Rich Hartel, PhD, and Baomin Liang

Department of Food Services, UW-Madison

The cost of sugar is rising and because of this, sucrose is a costly ingredient to use in food manufacturing. Here in the United States it is becoming particularly costly because there are artificial price supports on sucrose.  In this research we compared the growth rates of sucrose crystals in the presence of another ingredient, used as a less costly sucrose replacer.

Seven sugar replacers were tested and compared to a pure sucrose control. A 100.00 g syrup was made comprised of 80% sucrose, 18% water, and 2% inhibitor. The syrup was carefully stirred and heated until the syrup weighed 100.00g plus the weight of the beaker and stir rod. The syrup had a final water content of 18%. Then a sample of the syrup was placed, with a pipet, onto a slide with a shallow well. A cover glass was placed over the slide and then observed under a microscope. A few sucrose crystals formed through the process of nucleation, providing the seed crystals used to track growth rate. The goal was to determine the extent of sucrose growth inhibition for each potential sugar replacer tested. The growth rates of a minimum of thirty crystals were observed per sugar replacer. This is because sucrose crystals exhibit growth rate dispersion, meaning each crystal grows at a different rate, even when growing in exactly the same environment. These results will be used to determine which sucrose replacer least inhibits crystal growth, so that the sucrose will still accomplish its goal in food manufacturing.

It was found that invert sugar had the least effect on the growth rate and fructose had the most effect, meaning it slowed the growth the most. The use of the sucrose replacer in combination with the sucrose will help to reduce manufacturing costs.