Sweetness is a complex physical, chemical, and physiological process produced by a sweetener molecule that stimulates a taste bud. The level of sweetness is called sweetness and is an important indicator of sweeteners. Sweetness cannot be quantitatively determined by physical or chemical methods, and sensory judgment can only be made by virtue of people's taste. In order to compare the sweetness of sweeteners, sucrose is generally chosen as the standard, and the sweetness of other sweeteners is the relative sweetness compared with it. There are two ways to determine the relative sweetness: one is to set the sweetener to the lowest concentration that can be perceived as sweet, called the limiting concentration method; the other is to formulate the sweetener into the same solution as the sucrose. Then, the sweetness of the sweetener is compared with a sucrose solution as a standard, which is called a relative sweetness method.
The sweetness of sweeteners is affected by many factors, the main ones are concentration, temperature and medium.
In general, the higher the concentration of the sweetener, the greater the sweetness. However, the sweetness of most sweeteners varies with concentration.
The sweetness of most sweeteners is affected by temperature and usually decreases with increasing temperature. For example, a 5% fructose solution has a sweetness of 147 at 5 ° C, 128.5 at 18 ° C, 100 at 40 ° C, and 79.5 at 60 ° C.
The media pair also has an effect. In aqueous solution below 40 ° C, the sweetness of fructose is higher than that of sucrose, and the sweetness of both in lemon juice is about the same.
