Any suggestions regarding Maltitol?

[Brad]

I have a diabetic relative and would like to make a small batch of chocolate for him. I've talked to a couple of chocolatiers and they have mentioned purchasing chocolate with Maltitol substituted for Sugar.

If and when I find it, what special adjustments would I have to make when concocting some chocolate?

They have also told me that tempering requires a bit lower of a temperature. Any thoughts on that as well?

Thanks
Brad.

[Alan]

Dear Brad,

I can't help you there, but I wonder why this product would be preferable to Sucralose? I would think that Sucralose could be used in the exact same way as sugar, in refining/conching times, amounts added, and in tempering temperatures. This is because it is actually made from sugar. Does anyone have any ideas about which product would be a better choice and why?

Sincerely,

Alan

[Brad]

In trying to find a solution for my relative, the research I've seen indicates that sucralose is up to 600 times sweeter than sugar whereas maltitol is about 90% as sweet as sugar, and exhibits more of the characteristics of sugar. In fact one source states that :

"...Before the development of maltitol, the production of "sucrose-free" or "no sugar added" chocolate proved difficult because of the lack of a polyol with the physical, chemical and organoleptic properties of sucrose. Maltitol’s anhydrous crystalline form, low hygroscopicity, high melting point and stability allow it to replace sucrose in high quality chocolate coatings, confectionery, bakery chocolate and ice cream...."

More on this topic can be found at www.caloriecontrol.org/maltitol.html.

However useful this knowledge is (which I incidentally found interesting), it still doesn't answer my original question about how to appropriately substitute it for sugar.

Thanks for posing the question Alan. Hope somebody can help me out.

[Alan]

brad said:

In trying to find a solution for my relative, the research I've seen indicates that sucralose is up to 600 times sweeter than sugar whereas maltitol is about 90% as sweet as sugar, and exhibits more of the characteristics of sugar. In fact one source states that :

"...Before the development of maltitol, the production of "sucrose-free" or "no sugar added" chocolate proved difficult because of the lack of a polyol with the physical, chemical and organoleptic properties of sucrose. Maltitol’s anhydrous crystalline form, low hygroscopicity, high melting point and stability allow it to replace sucrose in high quality chocolate coatings, confectionery, bakery chocolate and ice cream...."

I wonder about a couple of things:

1) The Splenda package (sucralose) says to use it in the same way one would use sugar. This includes cup for cup measuring for baked goods. If it were 90% sweeter than sugar, this wouldn't work. In short, the sucralose molecule may be sweeter than the sugar molecule, but the way that Splenda grains are "formed" must be in such a way that it measures as an exact equivalent for sugar cup for cup. This means that perhaps each grain is "puffed" up--and it does look that way--in order to make sure that there is an equivalency.

2) I believe that sucralose is the newest non-calorie sweetner on the market. I think that Maltitol predates it considerably, and so when your quote says:
"Before the development of maltitol" that sugar-free chocolate was difficult to make, this may be true, but now sucralose exists, and should make it even easier.

I am not trying to convince you not to use Maltitol if that is what you want to use, but unless there is a reason not to use Splenda (sucralose), that I am not aware of, I simply wonder if it would be the better choice, as it can be measured exactly like sugar, and is actually produced from sugar, making it the most "natural" tasting replacement in my opinion.

If there is a reason not to use Splenda, then I would sincerely like to know what it is, as I was thinking about trying a batch but wouldn't want to ruin that much chocolate.

Alan

[Sebastian]

There are a number of things to consider when going sugar free (i'm a little pressed for time tonight, so if i don't finish this post, remind me to build upon it later..):

1) flavor
2) glycemic / insulinemic index
3) cooling effect
4) digestive tolerance
5) bulking properties
6) thermal/hygroscopic properties
7) relative sweetness

The main reason for going sugar free, for you anway, is to control sugar intake and subsequently your relatives insulin plasma levels. Most sugar subsitutes fall into the category of polyols - or polyhydric alcohols (sugar alcohols). These are ingredients that started off in life as sugars, and then were chemically or enzymatically altered (an -OH group, or alcohol group) was added - hence the term 'sugar alcohols'. Most sugar alcohols are chemically hydrogenated (only erythritol is naturally produced en masse). None of them will create a chocolate that's indistinguishable from 'real' chocolate, but some of them can get quite close. Your main choices to use for polyols are lactitol, mannitol, maltitol, isomalt, and erythritol. Maltitol is typically seen as the 'gold standard' in terms of flavor, although erythritol products run a very close second. Mannitol and lactitol often have a metallic flavor associated with them. I would not recommend them for reasons we shall get to shortly.

When you eat something - anythying - your body tries it's best to turn it into sugar and get that sugar into your blood stream so your body can use it for energy. A measure of how much of this actually gets into your blood is called the glyecemic index - it runs from 0 to 100, with 0 being no sugar gets into your blood, to 100 being dextrose. Maltitol is about 33 in the GI scale, lactitol about 10, isomalt about 13, mannitol about 20, and erythritol is 0. From a diabetic standpoint, erythritol's the best option. Interestingly, fructose, while a sugar (not a sugar alcohol) is often used in diabetic products because it's GI is very low; however it's strongly hygroscopic and as such can be exceedingly difficult to work with in a chocolate application.

All sugar alcohols exhibit an effect when consumed called the 'cooling affect' - that is, when they dissolve in your mouth, they feel cold. Some of them have a relatively small cooling affect (such as lactitol) while others have a very strong coolinng effect (erythritol's the worst). The cooling effect can be reduced in a variety of ways, and if you're interested, we can discuss some of those later.

Digestive tolerance is perhaps the second most important issue to consider, behind glycemic. When you eat sugar alcohols, for the most part your body sort of recognizes them as familiar (they're based on sugars), and tries to digest them. It only gets so far before getting confused and is unable to digest them further, and then your body 'spits' them out (I can get far more technical if you'd like). Mannitol and lactitol have the worst tolerances (meaning if you eat a very little, the 'uh oh' factor kicks in very quickly - as in 'uh oh, i've *really* got to go to the bathroom ... NOW). Maltitols' and isomalts' tolerance is mid range (about 0.3 g / kg body weight), and erythritols is the best (you essentially can't consume enough to be a problem).

Actually, i need to run... i'll have to finish this a bit later... sorry...

[sugaralchemy]

NOTE: I was writing this post at the same time as Sebastian. So I generated the entire post independently, despite being posted a few minutes later. In fact, I didn't even notice Sebastian's post until after I posted my addendum post. I think my post is probably more detailed than Sebastian's (though he said he was pressed for time) but for the most part, we identified many of the same points.

--------------------

I am a bit of an expert on sugar replacement in general. I'm actually developing a range of very low glycemic, lower calorie sugar replaced products, and I'm poking around on here because I'm exploring the techniques people use to produce chocolate - particularly gourmet-quality chocolate.

I can't divulge the complete details of my formulation techniques, but I can share a little information with you.

Splenda is the name brand for sucralose. Sucralose is 600 times sweeter than sugar, so it is impossible to work with in a home kitchen, nor does it provide any volume or texture in products. Normal Splenda (the stuff in yellow packets and the super fluffy, light powder in the yellow bags) is a blend of sucralose bulked out with maltodextin and/or dextrose. The point of the maltodextrin/dextrose is to simply fluff it up enough to work with. It has 1/8 the weight of sugar and none of the properties of sugar.

There is also "Splenda for Baking" which looks like sugar, but has added sucralose so it is twice as sweet as sugar - and hence you're supposed to use half as much. Don't confuse this with the regular type of Splenda mentioned above.

Sucralose is not very useful for chocolate making. It doesn't give any volume or texture. If you care anything about flavor, sucralose tastes like crap. It has a terrible lingering sweetness, yet the sweetness comes on very slowly. The bitterness suppression is strange, and it interacts unusually with chocolate and acidic flavors.

Maltitol is a low intensity sweetener, a sugar alcohol, and it tastes very much like sugar without an aftertaste. Please read about it on Wikipedia where I have contributed significantly to many of these types of articles:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltitol

In short, maltitol is the most sugar-like sugar alcohol. It is 90% as sweet as sugar, does not caramelize, and has a more pronounced cooling effect. It appears to be the most suitable replacement for sugar from a functional standpoint.

However, maltitol is not the best sugar alcohol from a nutritional standpoint. For diabetics, it still has a significant impact on blood sugar, not really all that much less as compared to sucrose (table sugar). Please read more about it in the context of diabetes here:
mendosa.com/netcarbs.htm

Furthermore, maltitol is likely to cause gastric distress, because it's not fully absorbed and can cause your intestines to "juice" just like sugar "juices" sliced strawberries. (The dreaded laxative effect!) It can also cause gas and bloating, sometimes very severe. Ironically, it seems that the less gastric distress you experience, the larger the impact on blood sugar.

I suggest you encourage your diabetic friend to precede with caution when consuming maltitol containing foods - both on the blood sugar and gastric tolerance fronts.

Most chocolate producers make their chocolate by replacing sugar with maltitol directly. In general, maltitol sweetened chocolate will come out blander than sucrose sweetened chocolate for a variety of reasons. Occasionally, the maltitol usage levels will be slightly higher than would be used with sugar due to the reduced sweetness. Lower sugar chocolates tend to come out a bit better for a variety of reasons I'll get into in a moment.

Aside from nutritional concerns, maltitol has two significant differences from sugar, plus another minor one.

The first is that it has a greater cooling effect, as compared to sucrose. This will make your chocolate more waxy and tend to slow the flavor release. This is because as the maltitol starts to cool as it dissolves, this slows the cocoa butter's ability to melt in your mouth. Sugar does that a little, maltitol does it more. The reduced melting rate and increased waxiness causes the chocolate flavor to be released more slowly, usually being less rich and mouth filling.

The second significant effect is the reduced sweetness. It is about 90% as sweet as sugar, which means you must use 11% more for the same level of sweetness. Having a lower level of sweetness yet the same mass tends to make a more bland tasting chocolate (with sugar, using less sugar means more unsweetened chocolate), and while you can boost the sweetness by increasing the maltitol levels, that tends to dilute the levels of chocolate liquor, or reduce the richness adding cocoa butter / powdered milk. Also, increased usage levels of maltitol further exacerbate the aforementioned cooling effect and waxiness, which tend to reduce the chocolate perception somewhat.

So, as you can see, working with maltitol is an interesting process. However, the basic processing is almost entirely the same. Maybe slight differences in tempering, but tempering is more about the fat rather than the sugar.

To produce a better maltitol sweetened chocolate, you will want to experiment around, perhaps with a little higher levels of unsweetened chocolate and/or a little lower levels of the "sugar" component (maltitol). Also try using just a LITTLE splenda to top off the sweetness... just a little bit of it will increase the sweetness of maltitol right up there to the level of sugar without adding nasty off-tastes. In general, you'll probably like darker chocolates made with maltitol the best. You expect less of the properties and taste of sugar in those sorts of chocolate. And lower levels of maltitol bode better in terms of blood sugar and gastric tolerance issues.

[sugaralchemy]

As an addendum, the "next generation" of chocolate is about reducing or eliminating maltitol. One great ingredient that is often used is erythritol, which is almost non-caloric and has nearly no impact on blood sugar.* The new formulations reduce blood sugar impact, gastric distress, calories, etc. However, they do not necessarily have better taste as compared with maltitol.

The most common "next generation" formulation is an erythritol/inulin/sucralose blend. You'll find it in Hershey's 1Carb, ZCarb, etc chocolate and a number of other companies' products.

I even have a few reference commercial formulations for you:
www.eridex.com/docs/pdfs/recipe/r_choc_01.pdf

More data on erythritol and some stuff about use in chocolate:
www.eridex.com/docs/pdfs/IFT_Low_carb_innovations_with_erythritol.pdf

*Yes, we can have a very long debate about this. But if you read up on the studies, you will find most report Erythritol is non-glycemic, while there are others reporting a low-level response.

[Sebastian]

This is great - lots of information i'll pick up where i left off...which was digestive tolerance. Let's see - mannitol and lactitol have a tolerance of about 0.15g/kg body weight, maltitol/isomalt about 0.33 g/kg body weight, and erythritol's much much higher. Folks like roquette or SPI tend to say you can eat a specific amount, say 50 g of maltitol, before running into problems - i completely disagree with that approach as i can guarantee you that while i might be able to safely down 50g of maltitol, there's no way my 6 yr old daughter can. Erythritol's physically much smaller than the rest of the polyols - most polyols have a molecular weight north of 300, while erythritols about 1/3 that - as such erythritols able to pass the tissue barrier in your digestive system and get into your blood stream, where your renal system will filter it out (after all, if you can't digest it, what goes in must come out, right?). You end up having to urinate more, but there's no laxative issues (~95% goes into blood plasma, the other 5% is fermented while waiting to osmitically pump itself into the blood into mainly short chain fatty acids). The gist here is that different polyols have different tolerance levels, choose wisely young jedi.

Now, just to complicate things, I'll throw in another topic that's related to the above two (tolerance and heat of solution). Since all polyols are going to have a negative heat of solution (they feel cold) to one degree or another, and since tolerance may be an issue with some of them, you can also formulate your product to have higher levels of proteins or fibers - both of which have a positive heat of solution (they feel slightly warm when consumed). Both proteins and fibers have a very very low glycemic index, so they're diabetic friendly. As far as tolerance goes, proteins not an issue, and fiber.. well, it's fiber, so there's going to be a regularity aspect to it. Inulin (more specificially, oligofructose with DPs both < and > 20) are often used in conjunction with erythritol to take advantage of this cooling effect depressant.

So.. on to bulking properties. Since sugar is often 50% of the formula, if you take it out, you have to physically fill that space with something else - the polyols. Someone asked why can't you use sucralose and be done with it? Well, sucralose is something called a high intensity sweetener (HIS). There's a number of HIS's out there (ace-k, aspartame, neotame, sucralose, etc) as well as a few natural ones (lo han, thaumatin, neohesparidin dihydrochalcone, etc - none of the naturals are approved in the US for food use currently though, some of them are in Europe). They are all much, much more sweet than sugar, anywhere from 20x to 14,000x - the problem is that if you only use 1/14,000th of the amount to get the same sweetness, you've fallen far short of the bulking that you need - so be design you aren't able to use the HIS solely as the sweetener - it has to be used in conjunction with another material (usually a polyol). If you use too much of the HIS you'll find that the flavor has shifted from a sweet flavor to a very noticeable off flavor, often metallic or bitter. You'll also find that you can use combinations of HIS's to achieve synergistic effects and better sweetness onset, duration, and flavor.

OK, next topic - thermal/hygroscopic properties. Sort of a rehash on the first part as i've already mentioned heat of solution - polyols feel cold when consumed, varying degress of this, yadda yadda. On the water front, some of them are very hygroscopic and don't lend themselves to use in chocolate manufacture, and as such i've not listed them in the original post as typical options (there are many more polyols than I've listed, but i only listed those which are appropriate). T'other thing to consider is that some polyols, when crystallized, retian a small bit of water inside the crystal - it's called the moisture of crystallization, and normally isn't a problem unless it's let out, and really the only way you're going to let it out is be melting it. Of the polyols listed above, the only once to concern yourself with on this front is isomalt (lactitol does come in various hydrate forms, but you'll never hit the temperatures needed to release that water). Isomalt comes in both a hydrated form and an anhydrous form - both are capable of making very very good tasting sugar free chocolates, but you need to pay very close attention to your temperatures for two reasons - one is the melting points of isomalt (isomalt is actually a blend of two hydrogenated sugars) are very low, and if it's the hydrated form you're working with, you'll release that water and as we all known, water and chocolate don't get along so well. the other is that the glass transition temperature of isomalt is also very low, and while i don't want to get into why that's important, suffice it to say that it has negative repurcussions. If you elect to use isomalt, i'd keep your temperatures at all stages below 110F.

Relative sweetness - as mentioned, all sugar alcohols started life as a sugar and have been subsequently altered a bit (-OH group). Besides confusing your digestive system and altering it's heat of solution, it also makes the less sweet as compared to it's starting sugar. As sugaralchemy noted, maltitol has the highest relative sweetness, about 90%. Isomalt is a close second, followed by mannitol. On paper, erythritol is more sweet (70%) than lactitol (40-50%), but in reality they're about the same (erythritols' not very soluable in water, and in order for sweetness to be percieved, it has to dissolve. since not much dissolves at any given time, the realistic sweetness equilivant is lower than 70%). This is the reason that HIS's are used - to bridge the gap between the relative sweetness and the expected sweetness you expect to get out of a piece of chocolate. Note that usage levels of HIS's are incredibly small (hundreths to ten thousandths of a %, you should have a very precise accurate way of measuring these out if you choose to work with them). The spelnda you see in the store is actually a blend of sucralose and maltodextrins, or a 25% solution in water (there's two consumer products out).

From a caloric standpoint, all sugar alcohols will be < 2.2 C/g, with erythritol being 0.2 in the US, and 0.0 in most of the rest of the world. All polyols will be non cariogenic (don't promote tooth decay).

Conching with sugar frees - there's a ton of reasons you conche a chocolate, a few of which are listed here:
1) moisture reduction - conching *can* drive off up to about 0.4-0.5% moisture - this is in a commercial manufacturing conche, and i would expect the amount of moisture reduction to be far less in the home production. actually, i would be surprised if there was any moisture reduction. commercially, this is a valid reason to conche a sugar free chocolate
2) flavor developement - when we conche chocolate for flavor, we want to drive two things - one is the volitalization of aromatics in dark chocolates, the other is malliard (caramel) reactions in mlik chocolate. The first reason is valid with sugar free chocoaltes as well, the second isn't - reason being that mailliard rxns require sugar to be present for these flavors to develop. Since sugar alcohols aren't sugars (they lack the ability to reduce as their reducing sites have already been reacted in the hydrogenation process - sorry, but of the chemist coming out in me), they'll never participate in the browning reactions and the flavor will never develop. For this reason, conching of sugar free products is not commonly done.
3) physical particle size modifications - most particle size modifications are done by refining - however in milk chocolates you can hit the glass transition temperature of lactose in the conche, and force further particle size modifications. Since lactose is a mlk sugar, and your goal is to be sugar free, again conching is not relevant to these products in this category.

Know it's a lot to take in, and i didn't go into specific detail on purpose on most of these. If you've got further questions Brad, i'm happy to address them.

Edit - your tempering profiles will remain exactly the same if you go with a sugar alcohol, with the exception of if you elect to use a hydrated isomalt - don't heat it above 110F for reasons previously mentioned....

[sugaralchemy]

Yeah, I would say by large, you're right on Sebastian. There are a few things I'd love to elaborate on or correct/clarify, but I don't think there's any point going into greater detail about this unless specific questions are posed. The greatest challenge for the home chocolate maker is going to be tracking these down and actually getting a good enough a handle on how they all work... because frankly, Sebastian and myself have only grazed the surface. I literally have dozens of ingredients on hand that offer sugar-type functionality, which I mix and match on a per-application basis, using several key formulation strategies. I can (and have) gone on for hours and many pages trying to comprehensively cover these issues for various projects, presentations, plans, etc.

It's probably worth wrapping this up with a note as to why this is so hard. The simple problem is that we want to eat something that tastes and acts just like sugar, including the full mass of sugar... yet has none of the calories or blood sugar impact. And nearly everything that we can't metabolize, we don't absorb, so it passes through our intestine unchanged and we get gastric tolerance issues. So even if we could somehow add a magic ingredient to prevent sugar from being absorbed (or, say, find a low cost means of producing L-sucrose*), it would cause gastric distress as bad or worse than maltitol. I've spent a great deal of time balancing taste vs digestive tolerance vs nutrition vs functionality and there's no perfect answer.

*L-sucrose is a "left handed" version of sucrose. Virtually all biological molecules are "right handed" - including virtually every form of sucrose naturally produced on this planet. This is referred to as chirality. So table sugar is D-sucrose, the right handed version that our body can digest. However, L-sucrose (the left handed version) has the exact same molecular formula as the common D-sucrose - and hence identical physical properties - yet is not biologically absorbable, so it would have zero calories, zero blood sugar impact, etc.

However, the lack of digestion would result in a laxative effect greater than that of maltitol. This is why it makes a great example as to how even simply finding a way to replace sugar with sugar - seemingly the perfect sugar replacement - would not be an acceptable solution. However, for the time being, L-sucrose is prohibitively expensive - last I checked, it was into the thousands of dollars per pound. And I don't think there has been a lot of hope of it becoming readily available anytime soon.

[Sebastian]

On an interesting note, the stereoisomer of which you note was very thoroughly evaluated as a sugar replacement by a confectionery company you'd all recognize. In the clinical trials it was discovered it was so indigestible that it made for an incredible laxative - and is now in a number of products exactly for that purpose

[sugaralchemy]

I've been thinking, we should probably provide a clear, solid route for the chocolate maker to produce a manageable product. An encyclopedia on sugar replacement is interesting, but may not be all that useful unless you have R&D materials around. I think isomalt might be just the solution - do you agree Sebastian? (I've never tried it or seen commercial formulations working with purely isomalt, so I couldn't tell you from personal knowledge, but I'm fairly confident it should be workable.) I wouldn't work with exclusively isomalt for a commercial formulation given the wide palate of ingredients available to me, but most people don't have hundred upon hundreds of pounds of sugar substitutes on hand at any given moment - so a more simple solution is in order.

Why isomalt? Isomalt has a very minimal negative heat of solution, -9.4 cal/g, compared to sucrose at -4.3 cal/g, and maltitol at -18.9 cal/g. (Erythritol is -43 kcal/g!) I believe isomalt has the least negative heat of solution among all commercially available sugar alcohols. Isomalt is is also low in terms of hygroscopicity. Sebastian made some special notes on handling it, but I think he agrees that it should be workable. The biggest issue beyond that is the fact that isomalt is not as sweet as sugar, something like 40-50% the sweetness of sucrose, so added high intensity sweeteners will be required.

Nutritionally, isomalt has a low impact on blood sugar, a lot lower than maltitol. I've seen some interesting studies suggesting that replacing sugar with maltitol in chocolate doesn't reduce the blood sugar response. Isomalt will significantly reduce the blood sugar impact. Isomalt also has medium range gastric tolerance - certainly better than something like lactitol. All of this will make it quite reasonable for diabetics and people in general.

Isomalt is available to the consumer in a number of blends. Occasionally, you'll find it at a specialty candy/cake store in plain form. This is probably not the best option, due to not having any added sweetener - there are better options.

The best option is to take a look at isomalt with an added high intensity sweetener. Diabetisweet is a blend of isomalt with acesulfame potassium. The level of acesulfame potassium brings the sweetness up to that of sucrose, but adds a bitter, metallic characteristic. Because of the acesulfame potassium, the overall sweetness comes on faster than sugar, but dissipates faster than sugar. Diabetisweet is fairly widely available. You may read about Diabetisweet and see where to buy it here:
www.diabeticproducts.com/diabetisweet.htm

Another product available to consumers is Lorann Gourmet's "Sugar Free Hard Candy Mix" which is a blend of isomalt and sucralose (the sweetener behind Splenda), basically added at the level required to reach sucrose sweetness. The disadvantage of sucralose is that it has a slow onset of sweetness, is sometimes a little metallic, and tends to absorb into the mouth and linger. You can read about this product and buy it from Lorann Gourmet here:
www.lorannoils.com/Productsdetail.asp?ProductName=HARD+CANDY+MIX+%2D+SUGAR+FREE&SubColumnName=hardcandymixes
(You will have to copy and paste the link because the forum developers obviously didn't bother to pay attention the RFC on URL encoding... www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt )
You may also prefer to buy it at one of these places, as it is a little cheaper:
store.yahoo.com/steviasmart/noname3.html
www.shopbettys.com/detail.aspx?ID=273

I would suggest combining these two isomalt blends to get a good taste. They are very effective together at improving each other's weak points. Starting out at 50/50 would be a good start, possibly moving to 67 lorann / 33 diabetisweet if you're getting a bitter or metallic taste*. I believe that refining at a lower temperature with isomalt will happen naturally, considering that the Santha wet grinder is unheated.

How does this sound for a manageable and reasonable sugar replacement technique for the home chocolate maker? Did I miss anything Sebastian?

*Darker chocolates can take more a little more acesulfame potassium (diabetisweet), because the chocolate is more powerful and a little bitter, hiding the acesulfame taste (and in some cases, acesulfame potassium can subtly accentuate the dark chocolate taste). On the other hand, milder chocolates and especially white chocolate would probably be better with more sucralose (lorann) because there's nothing masking the off taste of acesulfame taste - but do realize that too much sucralose will increase characteristics like slow onset of sweetness and lingering sweet aftertaste.

[Sebastian]

Well, I think theres a number of options available, all of them have positives and negatives. Isomalt's negative is that it can be a bear to work with if you've not got proper controls in your processing temperatures. If you have a firm grasp and good control on that (i've never used the santha, but my sense is that the only controls are on/off, and you get whatever heat you get - i dunno how much heat it generates), then isomalt can make a very good chocolate (try combiningg it with something like polydextrose at low levels if you're going this route - didn't discuss pdx above, but think of it as something very similiar to inulin). There's so many things to take into consideration it's hard to say which is the 'best' - i have my opinion on that, but if I ask a dozen people I'm likely to get a dozen different answers. Maltitol's seen heavy use for this because it's very easy to work with and gives a decent taste - it's negatives are that it'll purge you pretty quickly and it's not best in class for diabetics, altough it certainly can be appropriate for diabetics (standard disclaimer, i'm not a doctor, consult your physician, yadda yadda).

[Alan]

This is all really interesting stuff. Thanks to both of you for giving us so much to think about. After reading all of this, it is really clear why sucralose won't work.

Thanks again,

Alan

[sugaralchemy]

Posted in another thread by Alchemst:
"From past experience, I know the Santha equilibrates at about 110 F."

Perfect!

I believe that supports the idea that isomalt (as described earlier by me) would be a very good solution for diabetic chocolate. If you'd like to try a little polydextrose as suggested by Sebastian, you can obtain some here:
www.store.honeyvillegrain.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=637

Regarding maltitol for diabetics... I don't think it's really much better nutritionally, in most chocolate applications, than sugar. I've read studies that aren't exactly very positive about the glycemic index of maltitol in chocolate. Of all the sugar alcohols, it is by far the worst for glycemic response. Clearly, diabetics must carefully self-regulate their blood sugar and always be cautious... but it seems you want to do your best on the formulation end of things.

[sugaralchemy]

Of note... the Santha seems to run comfortably under 110° F for most formulations. Basically, when it is running, as chocolate gets cooler, the viscosity increases, so friction increases, and this leads to the chocolate warming up from the friction. The cylinder and grinders are not insulated and composed of granite and metal - neither of which promote an extremely warm temperature. This means the chocolate stabilizes not a whole lot above the melting point. I'm 99% sure that you would get excellent results using isomalt as described... perhaps with a dash of polydextrose as suggested by Sebastian. (Honeyville - linked to above - offers an unrefined form of polydextrose that should be suitable for use at low levels.)

If you are curious about maltitol, I came across an interesting page about the organoleptic properties of maltitol chocolate and sample formulations using maltitol:
www.maltitol-maltisorb.roquette.com/maltisorb-maltitol-sugar-free/29-42-0-0/maltisorb-maltitol-news/confectionery-production.html


or click here (adjusted by Alchemist - it's not a simple URL - it is a rather long one and that is the problem. Use it like an HTML tag and you will fine)

[Do not just click the URL! The forum developers are don't seem to know how to handle simple URLs, so you MUST copy and paste that address and REMOVE the space in "confectionery" - the stupid forum inserted it automatically, despite the fact that I am using the proper URL tags!]

I can't say that I recommend a maltitol approach to "diabetic-friendly" chocolate due to nutritional considerations, but I believe you'll find the page interesting at the very least.