QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE EVALUATION OF HIGH-INTENSITY SWEETENERS AND SWEETENER MIXTURES

High intensity sweeteners were evaluated for sweetness and bitterness intensity using time-intensity scaling. Mean intensities of 50:50 mixtures as well as the single sweeteners were used to compute predicted scores which were compared to the observed scores as a means of evaluating additivity in the mixtures. Concentration-dependent effects of subadditivity, additivity and hyperadditivity were observed within some sweetener pairs, but these did not follow any consistent pattern across sweeteners. Synergy, a special case of hyperadditivity evaluated by comparing predicted to observed scores, was seen in mixtures of aspartame and acesulfame-K at all concentrations. Aspartame/saccharin blends were synergistic only at the lowest concentration tested, despite the structural similarity between acesulfame-K and saccharin. Blends of sucrose/aspartame and acesulfame-K/saccharin did not exhibit synergy. Comparisons based on ratings of initial sweetness rather than the whole time-intensity curve, reflected previous findings of synergy in some sweetener pairs.