THE CONCENTRATION/RESPONSE FUNCTION BEHAVIORSOF NONCALORIC AND CALORIC SWEETENERS

Sweeteners are generally described in terms of their sweetness potencies relative to sucrose references. And, while caloric sweeteners have been found to have potencies invariant with sucrose reference concentration, noncaloric sweeteners decrease in potency as sucrose reference concentration increases. In this study, we develop methodology to determine the Concentration/Response functions for 9 (Omit “the”) noncaloric and 2 caloric sweeteners in water at room temperature.  Two-Alternative Forced Choice methodology with a panel of 80 subjects was used to determine is sweet concentrations for these 11 sweeteners and multiple concentrations of sucrose.  We found that the is sweetness data for all 8 of the high-potency noncaloric sweeteners are well modeled by the Law of Mass Action R = (R_m X C)/(K_d + C), where R is Response in % Sucrose Equivalents, R_m is Maximal Response in % Sucrose Equivalents, C is the sweetener Concentration in mg/L and K_d is the Concentration in mg/L resulting in Half-Maximal Response. We also found that the is sweetness data for the 2 caloric sweeteners Glucose and Fructose as well as the noncaloric sweetener Erythritol are well modeled by the linear function R = mC + b where m is the sweetener potency. This study enables an improved understanding of the bio-rationale for the well-known phenomenon of Sweetness Linger for high-potency noncaloric sweeteners.  The K_d values determined for these sweeteners enable calculation of the half-lives for Sweetener Receptor / Sweetener dissociation.  Our results make it clear that prolonged residence time on the Sweetener Receptor cannot be the bio-rationale for Sweetness Linger.