I am a Brazilian-American independent researcher living in the United States, I hold a degree in Chemical Engineering from Federal University of Paraná, in Brazil and a M.Sc. in Food Technology from the same university with a thesis titled “Effect of various nutritive and non-nutritive sweetneners on the formulation of jam with amidated pectin”. I had a faculty position for seven years at Catholic University of Paraná, in Brazil. A former researcher at California Institute of Technology in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, I worked with the development of a non-enzyme based glucose sensor.
Where are you from? I was born and raised in Curitiba (pronounced cu-ri-CHEE-ba), a city in Southern Brazil known as one of the most eco-friendly cities in the world. In 1996, my husband, a gastrointestinal surgeon and I came to Los Angeles to do research. After that we lived for seven years in San Francisco and six years in the Midwest, and then moved to Richmond, Virginia with our two kids. Why are you so interested in sugars and sweeteners? I started conducting research with sugar substitutes in 1990. I found myself having so much fun learning about sugars & sweeteners that I began to think that many people might be interested in that as well. So, in 1996, a faculty colleague and I wrote a book called “Food for Special Dietary Uses: Dietetics, sugar substitutes, fat substitutes, salt substitutes, International Regulation and Market,” published in Portuguese in São Paulo, Brazil by Livraria Varela. Over 1300 references, mainly about sweeteners, were cited, with over 40 charts and tables on detailed information about the properties and applications of sixty sweeteners approved around the world. Today, it still is a reference tool for students, researchers, teachers, food industry and lay people in Brazil. Challenged by having to sort through the plethora of resources, opinions and controversies about sweeteners, the Public Health Surveillance Agency (‘Vigilancia Sanitaria’) in the State of Parana, Brazil invited me to become a member of the Advisory Committee for “Food for Special Dietary Uses” Regulation and Labeling from 1993 to 1999. At that time no country in South America had these foods regulated and Brazilian consumers struggled to find the adequate nutrition information on many food labels.
Fast forward to 2016, and having been in the U.S. for twenty years, I saw a need for a blog that is impartial, is not trying to persuade the public about anything, does not contain a personal opinion and does not make any assumptions about sugars and sweeteners available to consumers in the U.S. Seeing that need, I sought to fill it with the What Sugar Blog. Why are you blogging? Sugars and sweet foods are among the most popular and widely consumed of all foods. That, combined with the widespread confusion over what each sugar, syrup and tabletop sweetener really is, makes it evident that consumers desperately need to better understand about them so they can make smart choices and keep uptodate with the latest sweeteners to hit the market.
