One efficient way to face this challenge is to convert juice sugars into low calorie sugar alcohols, like sorbitol, mannitol etc., which are almostas sweet as sugar but contain about 40% less calories, are not metabolized by oral bacteria, and do not contribute to dental caries [1,2].
Also they are incompletely absorbed into the blood stream from the small intestine resulting in a smaller change in blood glucose level[3,4].
Complete conversion of juice sugar into sugar alcohols will contribute to roughly 40% calorie reduction.
In order to label a juice as “low calorie” product, calorie reduction should be at least 25%
relative to the untreated juice [11].
Swiss patent 668 887 [12] discloses an ethanol free low calorie fruit juice made by fermentation
with yeast resulting in metabolism of the sugar to CO2 and water, rather than to ethanol.
The whole yeast cells were then separated from the alcohol free low calorie juice. US patent 4971813 [13] discloses another process wherein flavours and volatiles are separated during pasteurization.
The deflavoured juice was fermented with yeast and then the separated flavour fraction was returned to the low sugar juice produced.
To the best of our knowledge, until now no attempt has been published on the production of low calorie pineapple juice through conversion of juice sugars by employing cell free enzymes.