Environmental life cycle assessment of producing sorbitol and maltitol from wheat starch using process simulation: The SWEET project

There is great interest in replacing added sugar in food products to reduce the negative health effects of excessive sugar consumption. High intensity non-nutritive sweeteners can replace the sweet taste of sugar, but they only replace a fraction of sugar's mass. Therefore, additional bulking agents (e.g., sugar alcohols) are required in food formulations to also replace sugar's mass and technical functions. To date there has been little environmental research into bulking agents. This is hampering efforts to fully understand the ramifications of replacing added sugar with high intensity non-nutritive sweeteners in a diet. Therefore, this study reports the first life cycle assessment of producing the sugar alcohols sorbitol and maltitol from wheat starch produced in Europe. Foreground data were generated by process simulation of all process steps from starch to final materials. The study also provides process and impact data for the related materials, glucose, maltose and high fructose corn syrup. Environmental impact is reported from the ReCiPe 2016 (H) method. Global warming potential of sorbitol was 1.61 kgCO₂-eq/kg, and maltitol was 3.25 kgCO₂-eq/kg. In general, across all ReCiPe impact categories, and on a mass basis, both sorbitol and maltitol have greater environmental impact than sugar. Either sorbitol or maltitol could be used to replace the bulk properties of added sugar. Therefore, the results show that making such a replacement will have a marked effect on environmental impact of the food products, and wider diets, in which they are used.