Cabbage “has potential as sweetening agent”

Press, 3 July 1985, Page 6

Cabbage “has potential as sweetening agent”

PA Wellington Apple and cabbage tree could be a potentially popular juice flavour, if a demand for it develops. Cabbage trees could become a commercial crop with the increasing demand for high fructose syrup for use in the food processing industry, Mr Barry Fankhauser and Mr Donald Brasch of Otago University believe. The concentration of fructose or natural sweetness in the roots and stems of cabbage trees is high enough, they said. Fructose is a very good sweetening agent. It is almost twice as sweet as sucrose syrup and it is consequently used widely in

food processing. In the first issue of the “New Zealand Journal of Technology,” published by the D.5.1.R., Mr Fankhauser and Mr Brasch said if cabbage trees were developed for commercial plantings, yields of their fructosebearing roots and stems could compare favourably with sugar beet. An average yield of sugar beet is about 35 tonnes a hectare. Experimental yields from one species of cabbage tree indicated that three-year-old plants could produce 32 tonnes a hectare. The crop could increase to 64 tonnes a hectare after four years. Sugar cane yields an

average of 86 tonnes a hectare. Both sugar beet and sugar cane produce sucrose, which is less sweet than the cabbage tree’s fructose. “Fructose is an excellent sweetening agent. It is one of the major naturally occurring sweeteners in fruits and vegetables. Apples and pears contain up to 40 to 50 per cent of it on a dry basis, and honey up to 47 per cent,” Mr Fankhauser and Mr Brasch said. The sweetness of fructose complements fruit flavours and its composition does not change in acidic beverages. The cooked roots of cabbage trees used to be a food throughout Polynesia, and until the 19th century the Maoris steamed both roots and stems in large earth ovens.