Fructose as sweetener

Fructose, a sweetener that is monosaccharide found naturally in fresh fruit and honey. It is obtained by the inversion of sucrose by means of the enzyme invertase and by the isomerization of corn syrup.

Fructose is an established sweetener for diabetics and is used in several countries. Of the natural sugars other than sucrose used by humans, fructose is the sweetest (nearly twice as sweet as table sugar, sucrose) and it is the most water soluble. It is hygroscopic, making it an excellent humectant when used in baked goods.

Food manufacturers became interested in fructose as an alternative sweetening agent because fructose is the sweetest of all sugars commonly found in nature. Finding an inexpensive source of fructose, they reasoned, would allow them to replace sucrose and therefore reduce their production costs.

However while the monosaccharide form of fructose is found naturally in many fruits and vegetables, there are very few natural sources that would be available on a large scale. Eventually a process was developed in which glucose was converted to fructose using natural enzymes.

An early effort at creating a fructose sweetener was patented in 1935. This process relied in extraction of fructose (also known as levulose) from plants including Jerusalem artichoke, dahlias, chicory, and beet sugar molasses.
Fructose as sweetener