Peeling Back the Layers of Flavour Application
One Sweet, Two Sweet
By Robert Muir

We have learnt about the vast variety of sweeteners in the market (Let’s Sweeten the Deal) but now we have to figure out which sweetener is best for our product. When selecting a sweetener, the following thought process should be undertaken:

• Are there labelling requirements when considering our sweetener? Is the end product going to be considered natural or artificial?

• Are there nutritional requirements that we need to meet when considering our sweetener? Sugar free, Keto, Low carb?

• Are there addition rate requirements that we need to consider when choosing our sweetener? Eg. We have allocated >.1% final product to the sweetener or we want the sweetener to make up some of the bulk of the product.

• Are there any taste requirements that we must meet with the sweetener chosen? Eg. Strong tasting base needs a clean taste to be masked; or a neutral base might not hide the bitterness that is present in some high intensity sweeteners.

Selection Examples:

Let’s take a carbonated beverage which can be artificially sweetened but must be low caloric, sugar free and taste like sugar. From the brief we can quickly identify that a high intensity sweetener can be used to meet the low caloric need and sugar free need. There is no requirement for the product to be natural so there is potential use for Sucralose (artificial), Stevia (natural) or Thaumatin (natural) for example. Stevia can be scrapped because it doesn’t have a sweetness profile that is similar to sugar. So MTP-010845 Sucralose or MTP-004977 Thaumatin would be acceptable solutions.

In another example let’s explore a low carb, alcoholic, natural, seltzer but the consumer base is against high intensity sweeteners. From the brief we identify that we cannot use a high intensity sweetener to satisfy the low carb restriction. The use of sugar alcohols might be our option but we still need to be wary of the low carb restriction. Erythritol has low carb content at certain dosage levels so this would be offered as a suggestion to the customer.

Back to the whey protein base from our “base” article, we might have the following restrictions: natural sweetener, >0.1% final product addition rate to keep protein content as high as possible and sweetness profile of sugar. From this brief we are after natural, high intensity sweetener that taste like sugar. MTP-004977 Thaumatin would be our recommendation.

Now we have our base and sweetener added, let’s call in a flavour and get this product tasting great!