Every sweetener displays individual sensory characteristics that can be used dexterously for optimizing taste profiles of low-calorie food products and for creation of taste as unique selling point against competitor’s portfolio. For measuring and evaluating taste profiles on a metric scale, the so called sensory test series are required to be run. For thaumatin, considerable sensory evaluation on a scientific basis was conducted in the Broste-Study in the past. Due to the extreme sweeting power of thaumatin (see graphic 1), it usually will be dosed in a content range from 1 to 300 ppm to achieve the desired sweetness of end products. With 1 kg purified thaumatin, for example, 60,000 l of lemon could be sweetened. It corresponds to the cultivation acreage of only 500 m2 of BarMatinTM.
Graphic 1: Sweetening intensity of thaumatin and other substitutes in comparison to sucrose. Due to this extreme intensity specific taste characteristics could be induced even with a dosage under 1 ppm.
Thaumatin in principle could be applied in the food and pharmaceutical industry for the following tasting purposes:
Because of its low energy content of 4 kcal/g and minimized dosages, thaumatin belongs to the energetic group of zero-calorie sweetener. Thaumatin is soluble in water and heats stably up to a temperature of 120° C, thus allowing a broad application even for pasteurised food and beverage products. The sweetness of the protein comes moderately delayed and keeps in a lasting manner. Application with very high contents could cause a liquorice after taste.
Thaumatin is also known to conceal bitter and metallic aftertaste. This feature could help improve the taste of citrus and grapefruit drinks and reduce bitterness coming from metallic salts like KCl (see graphics 2 to 4).
Graphic 2: Masking of bitterness. With a successive increase of thaumatin content from 0 to 5 ppm, bitterness (y-axis) caused by ‘Vitamin B complex (0,44 %)’, ‘Caffeine (0,1 %)’ and ‘Soybean peptides (1000 ppm)’ can be reduced linearly (statistical significant at p > 95 %).
Graphic 3: Masking of bitterness in a grapefruit beverage. Addition of 0.7 ppm thaumatin (trade name Talin) leads to a clearly improved sensory profile. This is the case for the taste categories ‘Grapefruit’, ‘Sweet’, ‘Bitter’ and ‘Sour/Acid’ (statistical significant at p > 95 %).
Graphic 4: Comparison of different sweeteners in a bitter lemon-lime diet soft drink (fresh (‘0 Months’) and six months old (‘6 Months’)). Masking with 1.8 ppm thaumatin (trademark Talin) and with aspartame (Asp) and acesulfam-K (AceK) mixture in 1:1 proportion cause a clearly improved sensory taste profile. In particular after long storage periods the effect of thaumatin persists disproportionately high (statistical significant at p > 95 %).
The intention of enhancing is to bring positive taste characteristics to the foreground and that is different from masking. For that purpose, the Broste-Study discovered some useful sensory features for thaumatin. For strawberry milk shake (see graphic 5) and calorie-reduced chocolate drink (see graphic 6) positive aromas could be considerably enhanced with thaumatin.
Graphic 5: Enhancing of positive taste characters of a strawberry milk shake by the addition of only 2 ppm thaumatin (trade name Talin). The graphic shows the percentages of test persons (y-axis) that remark a better taste for one of the taste categories ‘Better flavour’, ‘Creamier’, ‘Thicker’, ‘Other’ and ‘Total’ (statistical significant at p > 95 %).
Graphic 6: Enhancement of positive taste characters of calorie-reduced chocolate drink. The addition of 2 ppm thaumatin (trade name Talin). The graphic represents the ratings (y-axis) of the test persons, which evaluate the taste categories ‘Chocolate flavour’, ‘Mint flavour’, ‘Long-lasting’, ‘Creaminess’ and ‘Overall’ (statistical significant at p > 95 %).
As shown in graphic 6, thaumatin is well suited for enhancing a mint taste in candies. It occasionally succeeds with a dosage of less than 1 ppm thaumatin. This characteristic could be useful for sweetening chewing gums.
Good sensory characteristics could be highlighted in mixtures of different sweeteners. In industrial applications, thaumatin could be excellently combined with aspartame, acesulfame-K, saccharin and polyol; also a series of favoured aromas can be intensified in mixtures. Notably, thaumatin shows taste synergism in mixtures with the zero-calorie sweetener stevia (steviol glycoside rebaudioside A) because it suppresses the undesired aftertaste, typical for the stevia taste profile. In addition, thaumatin in mixtures with aspartame causes significant synergism effects owing to a more intensive sweetness of aspartame per se (see graphic 7). A dosage of only 10 ppm thaumatin allows a reduction of the content of aspartame by about 30%. According to that, taste synergism could play a crucial role in cost reduction for food and beverage production systems.
Graphic 7: Synergistic sweetness intensity of aspartame with increasing thaumatin content (0 to 3 ppm). The bar diagram shows the ratings (y-axis) of test persons who evaluate the sweet intensity of aspartame with mixtures of increasing thaumatin allowances in a range from 0–3 ppm (statistical significant at p > 95 %).
In conclusion, thaumatin as a sweetener embraces a broad sensory portfolio on possible taste improvements for industrial applications. Additionally, as a sucrose substitute and mixture partner for low-calorie popular sweeteners it has inimitable exquisiteness.
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