Faculty of Bioscience Engineering, Department of Food Technology, Safety and Health, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2021;61(5):713-741. doi: 10.1080/10408398.2020.1743966. Epub 2020 Mar 26.
Obesity and type 2 diabetes are major health problems affecting hundreds of millions of people. Caloric overfeeding with calorie-dense food ingredients like sugars may contribute to these chronic diseases. Sugar research has also identified mechanisms via which conventional sugars like sucrose and fructose can adversely influence metabolic health. To replace these sugars, numerous sugar replacers including artificial sweeteners and sugar alcohols have been developed. Rare sugars became new candidates to replace conventional sugars and their health effects are already reported in individual studies, but overviews and critical appraisals of their health effects are missing. This is the first paper to provide a detailed review of the metabolic health effects of rare sugars as a group. Especially allulose has a wide range of health effects. Tagatose and isomaltulose have several health effects as well, while other rare sugars mainly provide health benefits in mechanistic studies. Hardly any health claims have been approved for rare sugars due to a lack of evidence from human trials. Human trials with direct measures for disease risk factors are needed to allow a final appraisal of promising rare sugars. Mechanistic cell culture studies and animal models are required to enlarge our knowledge on understudied rare sugars.
肥胖和 2 型糖尿病是影响数亿人的主要健康问题。高热量食物成分（如糖）的热量过度摄入可能导致这些慢性疾病。糖的研究还确定了常规糖（如蔗糖和果糖）可能对代谢健康产生不利影响的机制。为了替代这些糖，已经开发出许多糖替代品，包括人工甜味剂和糖醇。稀有糖成为替代常规糖的新候选物，其健康影响已在个别研究中报道，但对其健康影响的综合评价和批判性评估仍缺失。本文首次详细综述了稀有糖作为一个整体的代谢健康影响。特别是阿洛酮糖具有广泛的健康影响。塔格糖和异麦芽酮糖也具有多种健康影响，而其他稀有糖主要在机制研究中提供健康益处。由于缺乏人体试验证据，几乎没有任何健康声称被批准用于稀有糖。需要进行有直接疾病风险因素测量的人体试验，以最终评估有前途的稀有糖。需要进行细胞培养和动物模型的机制研究，以扩大我们对研究较少的稀有糖的认识。
