Samples presented for determination of the sorbitol content often contain various kinds of saccharides and these interfere with the determination by oxidation with periodate or some other methods. For the application of these methods, separation of sorbitol from saccharides is required. For this purpose, bakers' yeast with the sugar assimilability is considered to be useful, as it assimilats 95% or more of total saccharides. Therefore, some experimental conditions are examined to apply the bakers' yeast. As a result, an experimental condition was established and described as follows: (1) The adding amount of the bakers' yeast should be 0.4% to the test solution. (2) The applicable composition of the test solution should besaccharides%≤O.5%sorbitol%≥ 2×(saccharides%) In the case the content of sorbitol and/or saccharides is not known, the concentration is adjusted to the applicable sorbitol saccharides composition with adding known amount of sorbitol. By this method, reasonable values were obtained for several processed food products containing sorbitol and saccharides. Some examples are shown in this report.

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As Saccharomyces cerevisiae cultivated in the fruit water of a sweet potato starch factory was confirmed to have good qualities for a baker's yeast, some other uses of the yeast were investigated. The content of RNA in the yeast was only 60% of that in Candida utilis manufactured for a food yeast. In the feeding experiments, the increase of body weight of the rabbits given dry yeast in place of soy bean cake was larger than that in the control, while no difference was recognized between the control and the rabbits given the dry yeast from which RNA had been extracted.

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Ash contents of potato starch prepared from five varieties of potato in Hokkaido were examined. The ash contents of starch prepared from Normn No. 1 and Benimaru which were mainly cropped in Hokkaido were lower than 0.2%. This figure came up to the first grade starch standard according to Testing Standard for Agricultural Products by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Japan. While those from Eniwa, Hokkaiaka and Tarumae showed higher value. The major constituent of each starch sample was found to be phosphorus pentoxide. Gelatinization process of each starch sample was measured by Amylograph and Photopastegraph, and those of higher ash contents had higher viscosity and light transmittance.

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Karrer et al. reported that maltitol consisted of 1 mole of glucose and 1 mole of sorbitol, and Chizhov et al. made clear by mass-spectophotometry that their linkage-type was 1, 4-glucoside linkage. It has not been reported, however, that whether the linkage-type between glucose and sorbitol is α- or β-linkage. Authors tried to determine the said linkage-type by using IR and NMR spectrophotometries, against cellobiitol as contrast. In the NMR spectra of maltitol and cellobiitol, single doublet signal for each spectrum was observed, and their coupling constants (3.5 Hz for maltitol and 7.0 Hz for cellobiitol) indicated that maltitol and cellobiitol had α-linkage and β-linkage respectively. The same evidence was also provided by the absorptions of IR spectrophotometry at 850 cm-1 for maltitol and 890 cm^-1 for cellobiitol. Therefore, the results in these spectral resolutions illustrated clearly that the structure of maltitol was shown as 4-o-α-D-glucopyranosyl-D-sorbitol.

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Maltitol (4-O-α-D-glucopyranosyl-D-sorbitol) is a disaccharide obtained from hydrogenation of maltose. Recently it was reported in several papers that maltitol was hardly utilized in animals, and suddenly maltitol was watched with keen interest. Maltitol has been used as a calorie free sweetener and a food quality improver, and also been applied for low calorie food, diet for diabetics, etc. being almost the same sweetness as sucrose, acid and heat resisting and having excellent moisture-maintaining property. In this paper the authors explained the manufacturing methods, analytical manners, chemical structure, physical properties, and physiological characters of maltitol, and viewed the present state of the utilization and tendency of the study.

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