Sugar – starch – and carbohydrates – Products – Miscellaneous
Patent
1991-11-18
1993-10-12
Worris, Theodore
Sugar, starch, and carbohydrates
Products
Miscellaneous
127 43, 127 30, 426 96, 426103, 426804, 426658, 514 23, 4241951, C13F 300, A23G 300, A01N 6500, A61K 3170
Patent
active
052521362
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to a unique sugar composition containing soluble fibre. The sugar composition has substantially the properties of normal sugar, but advantageously contains a significant amount of dietary fibre, with consequent health benefits. The invention also provides a novel type of soluble fibre derived from sugar beet and a method for preparing it.
Recently, an increase in dietary fibre intake has been recommended for the U.K. population. Over recent years, the proportion of soluble fibre has decreased in the population diet, whilst the insoluble fibre proportion has increased.
Various suggestions have been made to introduce dietary fibre into the diet of humans, but none has found widespread acceptance.
Soluble fibre in the diet is most usually supplemented by means of oat bran or of breakfast cereals enriched with oat bran. Many people find such bran-enriched products distasteful and a majority of the population cannot be expected to consume such bran-enriched diets over the long term.
Sugar compositions containing soluble dietary fibre generally are known. The water-soluble fibre pectin is commonly used as a gelling agent by the food industry, e.g. in jam production. The pectin used in jam production is normally apple or citrus pectin or the naturally occurring pectin in the fruit. The applicant herein markets a jam sugar made by coating damp granulated sugar with a premix containing apple pectin, citric acid and icing sugar in equal quantities by weight. The end product contains 0.67% pectin by weight. A jam sugar containing citrus pectin is also known. Generally, jam sugars contain less than about 1% by weight pectin. The purpose of a jam sugar is to impart sweetness to a jam and more importantly to cause the jam to set or gel. Compositions containing fibre useful as a gelling agent (e.g. apple or citrus pectin) cannot be used in beverages or cooking as a sugar substitute.
One source of fibre is the sugar beet. The principal use of sugar beet fibre is currently in animal feedstuffs. The crude pulp is very distasteful to people and therefore cannot be used as human food. Of the purified, soluble beet fibres, beet pectin has probably attracted most attention. Beet pectin is designated a "pectin" because it contains galacturonic acid, but it has acetate ester groups attached to the polygalacturonic acid and for this reason it does not gel, or at least not in a manner satisfactory to the food industry. As a food product, therefore, beet pectin has not yet found any substantial application.
Commercial preparations of dietary fibre from sugar beet pulp are known. The product sold as Fibrex.TM. by a subsidiary of the Swedish Sugar Company is an example of such a preparation. Another example is the product sold as Duofiber" by the American Crystal Sugar Company. These preparations suffer the limited acceptance of pure fibre products and have low palatability. The present applicant sells a whole beet fibre product as Beta-Fibre.TM., which has been successful in the health food market.
Araban is one example of a fraction of the "soluble fibre" from sugar beet. The extraction process described involves treating a slurry of beet pulp at elevated temperature with calcium oxide.
Water-soluble beet fibre is also found in beet molasses, the liquor remaining after sugar has been extracted from sugar beet. Beet molasses contains sugar, soluble fibre and a miscellany of other by-products of sugar extraction, for example nitrogen compounds. Two thirds of the solids consist of sugar and, because soluble polysaccharide is adhesive, readily clogging the extraction equipment, the soluble polysaccharide content is deliberately kept to a minimum (usually less than 1% by weight although levels as high as 1.56% have been reported). Beet molasses is suitable for feeding to livestock, but is unpalatable to humans.
We have now also discovered in experiments with rats that soluble sugar beet fibre has cholesterol lowering properties, i.e. has a hypocholestrolaemic effect. Soluble fibres also have a beneficial effect on
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Cooper Julian M.
Desforges Malcolm
Williams Edward L.
British Sugar PLC
Hailey P. L.
Worris Theodore
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