Intense sweeteners functionality

Sweetness free, or at least virtually free, from calories establishes the need for intense sweeteners while suitability for diabetics, absence of carcinogenicity with functionality similar to sucrose and related carbohydrates form the basis for application of bulk sweeteners. 

Because of their non-metabolism or insignificant contribution to the calorie content of a diet, intense sweeteners seem to be an ideal means to lower calorie intake in sweet-tasting foods and beverages. Such a simple approach, however, would not take into consideration that function and properties of bulk sweeteners determine characteristics of many sweet-tasting products, e.g. texture, appearance and shelf stability amongst others.3... 

Intense sweeteners have low functionality besides their sweet taste. Therefore intense sweeteners cannot be used as the only sweetening agents whenever at least one of the mentioned functions is important for a product. Combinations of intense and bulk sweeteners will come close to sucrose and other sweet carbohydrates in functionality and taste, and can therefore be considered as an interesting alternative to sugar in applications requiring functional properties. They are often used in addition to bulk sweeteners in the typical application of these. 

Many sweet-tasting foods and beverages, however, do not require the functionality of sucrose and sweet carbohydrates. These products are the typical fields of application of intense sweeteners. As bulk sweeteners are used for taste reasons rather than functionality these products offer possibilities to reduce calories without sacrificing any important product characteristic. Intense sweeteners are used as the sole sweetening agents in beverages, table-top sweeteners like powder or tablets, desserts and dairy products besides a variety of further areas of lesser importance. 

Table 5.1 lists the functional constituents of soft drinks and their typical usage levels. Each category of ingredient, other than fruit juices and carbohy-drate/intense sweeteners, is discussed in more detail in the following sections. 

A hydroxypropylated starch hydrolyzate with a DP 2-6 (DE 20-45) functions as a bulking agent. When combined with a high-intensity sweetener, it is useful as a reduced calorie replacement for sucrose.233... 

Sweetness is an important and easily identifiable characteristic of glucose- and fructose-containing sweeteners. The sensation of sweetness has been extensively studied.80-82 Shallenberger83 defines sweetness as a primary taste. He furthermore asserts that no two substances can have the same taste. Thus, when compared to sucrose, no other sweetener will have the unique properties of sweetness onset, duration and intensity of sucrose. It is possible to compare the relative sweetness values of various sweeteners, as shown in Table 21.17,84 but it must be kept in mind that these are relative values. There will be variations in onset, which is a function of the chirality of the sweetener,85 variations in duration, which is a function of the molecular weight profile and is impacted by the viscosity, and changes in intensity, which is affected by... 

Recently, the conversion of xylose into value-added chemicals, such as xylitol, ethanol, and lactic acid have made this process attractive to the fermentation industry [4]. In particular, bioconversion for xylitol production has been intensively studied during the last decade because xylitol can be used as a functional sweetener [5]. 

Thaumatin is a group of intensely sweet basic proteins isolated from the fruit of Thaumatococcus danielli (West African Katemfe fruit). It consists essentially of the proteins Thaumatin I and Thaumatin II. Thaumatin is a taste-modifying protein that functions as natural sweetener or flavor enhancer. Thaumatin is stable in aqueous solutions between pH 2.0 and 10 at room temperature. As occurs with aspartame it is nutritive, containing 4kcalg , but due to its intense sweetness, the amounts used are small enough for thaumatin to be considered and classified as a nonnutritive sweetener. Thaumatin is approved for a number of uses in UK, Japan, Australia, the EU, and in many other countries. In the USA, it is approved as a flavor enhancer. 

In many situations in industrial chemistry, some important measured property of a product is a function of the proportions in which a set of p ingredients or components is represented in a mixture leading to the product. For example, case studies in the literature have covered subjects ranging from octanes of gasoline blends, discussed by Snee to strengths of different formulations of ABS pipe compound, treated in Koons and Wilt to aftertaste intensities of different blends of artificial sweeteners used in an athletic sport drink, discussed by Cornell to moduli of elasticity of different rocket propellant formulations, considered by Kurotori. For experimenting in such contexts, special statistical techniques are needed. These tools have been discussed at length by Cornell, and our purpose here is not to... 

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