Erythritol is a four-carbon sugar alcohol with about 75% sweetness of sucrose. It is the “glucose fermentation sweetener” produced by the fermentation of yeast using glucose, and is the only “zero calorie” sweetener in Japan. Due to the high consumers’ health consciousness, erythritol is used for the various fields such as the low-calorie product fields or sugarless confectioneries, etc. In this paper, we describe the physiological peculiarity and physicochemical characteristics of erythritol, and also introduce some applications using its specific characteristics.

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L-Arabinose is one of the pentose in nature and is a common component of various plant polysaccharides of hemicellulose. Small amount occurs in the free state in several foods, especially fermented foods such as miso, soy sauce, and whiskey. The taste of L-arabinose is quite similar to sucrose and the sweetness is approximately half of sucrose. L-Arabinose has a specific inhibitory effect on intestinal sucrase activity and suppresses the increase of blood glucose level after sucrose ingestion. In animals and humans, it has been reported that the addition of 2-3% L-arabinose to sucrose reduces about 50% elevation of the blood glucose level after sucrose ingestion. In this paper, I will explain the physiology function of L-arabinose mainly and as the application to food use, the synergistic effect of simultaneous intakes of L-arabinose and dietary fiber.

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Rare sugars are monosaccharides and their derivatives those rarely exist in nature, de fined by International Society of Rare Sugars. Recently enzymatic mass production of these sugars was established. D-glucose and D-fructose are abundant in nature and act as energy source, whereas rare sugars are not easily metabolized in the living organisms, but possess beneficial effects. In this report, we dealt with rare sugars such as D-psicose, D-allose, and D-tagatose, those have been well-studied so far. D-psicose is a zero calorie sweetener and has approximately 70% sweetness to sucrose. D-psicose suppresses the postprandial blood glucose elevation by α-glucosidase inhibition and facilitating gluco kinase translocation. D-psicose also reduces the abdominal fat accumulation through the suppression of lipogenic enzymes in liver. D-allose has approximately 80% sweetness to sucrose and gives energy value close to zero. D-allose suppresses the generation of reactive oxygen species and regulates the redox states in various cell lines, led to the suppression of elevating blood pressure, ischemia-reperfu sion injury, and cancer cell proliferations. D-tagatose has approximately 90% sweetness to sucrose and gives energy value close to 2 kcal/g. D-tagatose increases HDL cholesterol levels and suppresses the postprandial blood glucose elevation through the same mechanism as D-psicose.

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Vibrio cholerae hemolysin (VCH) is a protein forming transmembrane channels on a target cell to induce a strong cytotoxicity. However, the mechanism of pore (channel)-forming is not clear. This paper reviews the pore-forming behavior of VCH in a Langmuir monolayer, investigated by areatime measurements and atomic force microscope (AFM) observations.

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