{"id":98977,"date":"2019-11-24T22:42:36","date_gmt":"2019-11-25T06:42:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/bacteria-farms-produce-natural-sugar-safe-for-diabetics-and-teeth"},"modified":"2019-11-24T22:42:36","modified_gmt":"2019-11-25T06:42:36","slug":"bacteria-farms-produce-natural-sugar-safe-for-diabetics-and-teeth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/11\/bacteria-farms-produce-natural-sugar-safe-for-diabetics-and-teeth","title":{"rendered":"Bacteria farms produce natural sugar safe for diabetics and teeth"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Sugar poses one of the most pressing health problems in the modern world \u2013 not least because it\u2019s just so delicious. Rather than quitting sweets cold turkey, low-calorie alternatives to sucrose could make tasty treats that are at least less bad for us. And now, researchers from Tufts University have developed a more efficient method for producing one such sweetener, using farms of bacteria.<\/p>\n

The sugar in question is called tagatose<\/a>, which the FDA says<\/a> is \u201cgenerally regarded as safe.\u201d It\u2019s 92 percent as sweet as sucrose \u2013 regular old table sugar \u2013 but because the human digestive system doesn\u2019t metabolize as much of it, it only has 38 percent of the calories. That, in turn, means tagatose has a much smaller effect on blood glucose and insulin, making it safe for diabetics. And to cap it off, tests show that it doesn\u2019t contribute to cavities or tooth decay.<\/p>\n

But, of course, there\u2019s a catch \u2013 tagatose is a little complicated to produce. Normally, it\u2019s done by hydrolyzing lactose to make galactose, which is then isomerized into tagatose, which then needs to be purified and crystallized into a solid, usable form. Yields from this process are low, at less than 30 percent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sugar poses one of the most pressing health problems in the modern world \u2013 not least because it\u2019s just so delicious. Rather than quitting sweets cold turkey, low-calorie alternatives to sucrose could make tasty treats that are at least less bad for us. And now, researchers from Tufts University have developed a more efficient method [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1506,1495,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-food","category-health","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}