Maltitol, sucralose, aspartame: what are they? And why the kOBE kitchen picked a different set of sweeteners

Meet the three names on "sugar free" labels

Maltitol is a sugar alcohol. It's made from malt sugar, meaning maltose from starch. Maltitol is about 90% as sweet as cane sugar. Its taste and texture are very close to sugar, which is why it shows up in "sugar free" chocolate, hard candy and cookies.

Sucralose is made from the cane sugar molecule itself. Three small branches on the molecule are swapped for three chlorine atoms. The result is a sweetener about 600 times sweeter than sugar. The body barely absorbs it, so it has almost no calories.

Aspartame is built from two amino acids, the little building blocks of protein. It's about 200 times sweeter than sugar. Gram for gram, aspartame has the same calories as protein. But because so little is used, the calories come out close to zero. It's the familiar sweetener in calorie-free sodas.

All three have been assessed by food safety bodies such as JECFA (part of FAO and WHO), Europe's EFSA and the US FDA. Each has its own "acceptable daily intake" (ADI).

Each one has its own strength

No sweetener is good at everything. A quick comparison:

Looking at the table, you can see each one was made for a certain kind of product. Maltitol is great at making chocolate taste like chocolate. Sucralose and aspartame are great at making sweet drinks with almost no calories.

The kOBE kitchen does something else: it cooks thousands of Vietnamese dishes and bakes, every day. So we set three criteria.

Criterion 1: measures 1:1 like sugar, with a round sweetness

The kOBE recipe library holds 1,480 dishes. We want anyone to be able to cook them without doing math.

So the sweetener has to swap for sugar 1:1. If the recipe says 2 spoons of sugar, you use 2 spoons.

Sucralose and aspartame are hundreds of times sweeter. To measure 1:1, they need to be mixed with a filler. The common fillers are maltodextrin or dextrose, which are starch and sugar. That puts some starch or sugar back into the jar, which is what we want to avoid.

The group we chose has its own bulk: erythritol and allulose look and measure almost like white sugar. Monk fruit and stevia add just a tiny amount to lift the sweetness.

Of course, anyone could pair sucralose with erythritol. On this point, it comes down to a kitchen's taste. We love the round sweetness of monk fruit, the dried fruit many Vietnamese grew up with in Mom's pot of cooling herbal tea.

Criterion 2: can survive a Vietnamese kitchen

Vietnamese cooking isn't gentle. Braising fish for two hours. Glazing shrimp until sticky. Steaming bánh bò (rice sponge cake), baking crème caramel.

Aspartame is a wonderful sweetener for a cold can of soda. But with long cooking at high heat, it gradually breaks down and loses some sweetness. This is well-known chemistry. Many usage guides also advise against using it for long-cooked dishes.

The ingredients we chose all handle heat well. Allulose adds one more bonus: it browns in the oven, like real sugar.

Criterion 3: little effect on blood sugar

This is the criterion that took maltitol off the list.

Maltitol tastes very much like sugar. But the body breaks part of it down into glucose and absorbs it. So it still raises blood sugar, though more slowly and less than cane sugar. Reference tables put the glycemic index of maltitol at about 35, versus about 65 for cane sugar.

With the group we chose:

• Erythritol and allulose barely raise blood sugar.
• Monk fruit and stevia extracts don't either.

What about sucralose and aspartame? At everyday amounts, they also barely raise blood sugar. They weren't ruled out by criterion 3, but by criteria 1 and 2 above.

So should you avoid those three when eating out?

We don't think so. This is one kitchen's choice, based on what it needs to cook. It's not a ranking of good and bad sweeteners.

What's more useful is understanding what you're eating:

• "Sugar free" doesn't mean "calorie free." A maltitol chocolate bar still has cocoa butter, milk, and calories from the maltitol itself.
• Check for fillers too. A sweetener packet with maltodextrin or dextrose listed first still contains some sugar.
• Look at the whole habit. One "zero" soda a day is different from six. Sweetness, wherever it comes from, deserves moderation.

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