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many south american cultures enjoy traditional healthy foods and culinary treats. if you were to visit peru, you may be surprised to find that lucuma flavored ice cream is more popular than vanilla or chocolate. lucuma is a south american fruit that is gaining popularity as a healthy, whole fruit sweetener. it has a similar taste to a mango and has a beautiful golden yellow color. it adds a healthy sweetness to smoothies, raw chocolate and cakes.

the word is out about the dangers of high fructose corn syrup. this sticky sweet substance shows up in nearly all processed foods and headlines in soft drinks. studies have linked hfcs to obesity. caution should be practiced though as sugar in general has gotten a bad rep in the past years. diets like atkins and south beach shun all sugar, natural or not, and have led everyone to question what sugars they eat and where they come from.

in recent years carob has been known solely as a chocolate substitute, but this seductively sweet food has both the substance and the flavor to earn its own merit. the history of carob is as rich as its flavor. native to the rocky terrain of the mediterranean, carob pods have been used in food preparation for thousands of years. from ancient egyptians to mohammed's army to spanish conquistadors, carob found its way into a variety of cultures to serve many purposes.

some 70.4 million tonnes of sweeteners were used by the global food and beverage industry in 2008, including sugars. but which sweeteners are most used, in volume terms? humans are predisposed to like sweet foods, and sugar (sucrose) is far and away the most popular sweetener added to foods. but rising obesity rates are causing more attention to be paid to products' sugar content, and the development of ‘light’ foods, with fewer calories, is a major driver for new product development.

the french government has approved the use of stevia sweeteners with 97 per cent purity rebaudioside a (reb a), officially opening up the first eu market for products containing the much-anticipated ingredient. while full eu approval for stevia sweeteners is still dependent on a scientific opinion from the european food safety authority (efsa), france has taken advantage of window that allows individual member states to approve ingredients for a limited two year period.

sugar and monosodium glutamate have one thing in common. people are more likely to buy products containing them if they are called something else. consumers trying to avoid sugar have started reading food labels. many have begun to think that sugar by another name is not really sugar. manufacturers know that calling sugar evaporated cane juice for instance, fools people into thinking there is less sugar in the product.

dried baobab pulp, which gained novel foods approval for the eu in june, could be the headline superfruit of 2009, according to mintel. boabab is the fruit of the adansonia di gitata, (or 'upside-down') tree, which grows primarily in south africa, botswana, namibia, mozambique and zimbabwe. the fruit, which has a long history of use in africa, is understood to have a high antioxidant content.

neotame has moved a step closer to being approved for use in the european union as a sweetener and flavour enhancer, following a positive safety opinion from efsa. neotame, which was developed by the nutrasweet company in the us, is a derivative of aspartame. it is said to be around 7,000 to 13,000 times sweeter than sugar, but to have a sugar-like taste and no calories.

nutrinova, german based supplier of speciality ingredients, claimed this week that the recent uk approval of sucralose for use in food and beverages has opened up new opportunities for developing blends with the high-intensity sweetener, sunett (acesulfame k), produced by nutrinova. the company claims to have developed formulations and conducted several studies which demonstrate that, when combined in the sunett multi-sweetener concept, sunett and sucralose can deliver good tasting, stable sweetening systems without the calories.