On Food and Cooking

Sugars combine several useful qualities in one
ingredient: energy, sweetness, substance,
moisture binding, and the ability to
caramelize. The problem with this versatility
is that each quality comes with the others.
And sometimes we want just one or two
alone: the pleasure of sweetness without the
calories or stress on the body’s system for
regulating blood sugar levels, for example, or
the substance without the sweetness, or
substance and sweetness without the tendency
to brown when cooked. Manufacturers have
therefore developed ingredients that offer
some but not all of the properties of sugars.
Many of these ingredients were originally
discovered in plants; a few are entirely
artificial. Inventive cooks are now
experimenting with some to make candy-like
savory foods and other novelties.
There are two main kinds of sugar
substitutes. The first includes various
carbohydrates that provide bulk without being