Sweetness

The sweetening power is a dimensionless quantity that indicates the relative sweetness of a substance relative to table sugar.

Measurement

The measurement of the sweetening power of substances is problematic. There are no laboratory instruments with which the sweetening power could be measured. Usually used to prepare a 10 percent solution of the sweetener and is an average of the subjective assessments of a number of test subjects. The values ​​of the sweetening power relate to sucrose, which is assigned to a sweetening power of 1.

It has been found that the relative sweetening power of sweeteners increased with increasing concentration of the reference test solution. If different sweeteners mixed, the sweetening power may increase synergy by 20 to 30 percent.

For the benefit of a sugar substitute in the food industry, other properties are in addition to the sweetening power still relevant, eg

  • Whether the substance is insulin dependent
  • Whether the substance is cariogenic
  • Physiological calorific value
  • Costs
  • Sensitivity to heat, such as disintegrating dipeptides under heat and thus lose their ability to be sweet
  • Any side effects such as bloating or possible impairment of insulin secretion
  • Toxicity (height of the lethal dose)

Examples

An overview of the sweetening power of some sweeteners have the following table:

Lactose Sodium cyclamate Aspartame Digital Object Identifier
756269
de