Effect of substitution of sugar with xylitol and maltitol on characteristics and quality of cakes: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Background and Objectives Bakery products have the highest amount of sugar among food products. The cake is known as one of the most popular bakery products. Therefore, substituting sugar in cakes can be one of the ways to reduce product energy and prevent weight gain. In this study, comprehensive research was conducted to investigate the effect of replacing sugar with xylitol and maltitol on the quality of cakes. PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus, ProQuest, and Food Science and Technology Abstracts databases, were searched to find related studies. Finding A total of 617 articles were collected from different databases, and after checking with inclusion criteria, finally, 10 articles were included for meta-analysis. Conclusion Due to different percentages of xylitol and maltitol being used to replace sucrose in different studies, the studies were combined in subgroups with different replacement percentages. No significant difference was observed in most subgroups due to replacing sucrose with maltitol and xylitol. Significance and Novelty These results show that xylitol and maltitol have the same characteristics as sucrose, and their substitution in the cake does not cause a significant difference in the characteristics of the cake.