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SweetnessSweetness is one of the five basic tastes, and is almost universally regarded as a pleasurable experience. In the English language, things that are pleasant in a more general sense are often called sweet, in phrases such as "sweet rest," "sweet revenge," or "home sweet home." In many other languages, both ancient and modern, the adjective meaning sweet can also be used to describe things that are in any way very good: the author of the 104th Psalm of the Bible wrote, "My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the LORD." Main article: Sweetener A great diversity of chemical compounds are sweet. Among common biological substances, all of the simple carbohydrates are sweet to at least some degree. Sucrose (table sugar) is the prototypical example of a sweet substance, although another sugar, fructose, is somewhat sweeter. Some of the amino acids are mildly sweet; alanine, glycine, and serine are the sweetest; some other amino acids are perceived as both sweet and bitter. A number of plant species produce glycosides that are many times sweeter than sugar. The most well-known example is glycyrrhizin, the sweet component of licorice root, which is about 30 times sweeter than sucrose. Another commercially important example is stevioside, from the South American shrub Stevia rebaudiana. It is roughly 250 times sweeter than sucrose. Another class of potent natural sweeteners are the sweet proteins such as thaumatin, found in the West African katemfe fruit. Hen egg lysozyme, an antibiotic protein found in chicken eggs, is also sweet. Even some inorganic compounds are sweet, including beryllium chloride and lead acetate. The latter may have contributed to lead poisoning among the ancient Roman aristocracy: the Roman delicacy sapa was prepared by boiling soured wine (containing acetic acid) in lead pots. Hundreds of synthetic organic compounds are known to be sweet. The number of these that are legally permitted as food additives is, however, much smaller. For example, chloroform and nitrobenzene are both highly sweet, but also toxic. As of 2005, seven artificial sweeteners are in widespread use: saccharin, cyclamate, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose, alitame, and neotame. A few substances alter the way sweet taste is perceived. One class of these inhibits the perception of sweet tastes, whether from sugars or from highly potent sweeteners. Commercially, the most important of these is lactisole, a compound produced by Domino Sugar. It is used in some jellies and other fruit preserves to bring out their fruit flavors by suppressing their otherwise strong sweetness. Two natural products have been documented to have similar sweetness-inhibiting properties: gymnemic acid, extracted from the leaves of the Indian vine Gymnema sylvestre, and ziziphin, from the leaves of the Chinese jujube (Ziziphus jujuba). Gymnemic acid has been widely promoted within herbal medicine as a treatment for sugar cravings and diabetes mellitus. Check out the following recipes that are tagged "Sweetness":
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