Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Products per se – or processes of preparing or treating... – Noncarbohydrate sweetener or composition containing same
Reexamination Certificate
1999-05-07
2002-04-16
Wong, Leslie (Department: 1761)
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Products per se, or processes of preparing or treating...
Noncarbohydrate sweetener or composition containing same
C426S590000, C426S658000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06372277
ABSTRACT:
The invention relates to soft drinks, concentrates and syrups sweetened with a dipeptide sweetener and containing a fructosyl saccharide. The invention also relates to a method of maintaining the sweetening power of soft drinks, concentrates or syrups, sweetened with a dipeptide sweetener, during storage.
The term “soft drinks, concentrates and syrups”, as used in this application, includes carbonated and non-carbonated non-alcoholic drinks and concentrates thereof or syrups, including flavoured soft drinks, soft drinks with fruit and/or plant extracts, drinks containing tea extract, fruit nectars, soft drinks containing milk or milk-derived products, fruit lemonade syrups, lemonade syrups with plant extract and lemonade syrups with fruit flavour. Such soft drinks, concentrates and syrups generally have a pH lower than 7.
Soft drinks, concentrates and syrups sweetened with a dipeptide sweetener and containing a fructosyl saccharide are known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,978,751, which will be explained in greater detail below.
For the purposes of this application a dipeptide sweetener means a product which has a sweetening power many dozens of times stronger than that of sugar (sucrose), and which is constructed from amino acids or derivatives of amino acids linked via a peptide bond. The definition of dipeptide sweetener also encompasses all intensely sweet derivatives of a dipeptide sweetener, such as salts thereof with inorganic or organic acids. The best-known examples of dipeptide sweeteners are aspartame and alitame.
Aspartame (&agr;-L-aspartyl-L-phenylalanine methylester), hereinafter also referred to as APM, is a dipeptide sweetener with a sweetening power which is approximately 200× that of sucrose. Aspartame is used as an intense sweetener in many applications because of its good flavour properties and low-calorie characteristics. Aspartame is also widely used in soft drinks, concentrates and syrups.
Alitame, L-&agr;-aspartyl-N-(2,2,4,4-tetramethyl-3-thietanyl)-D-alanine amide hydrate, is a dipeptide sweetener with a sweetening power which is approximately 2000× that of sucrose. It is expected that alitame will also be widely used in soft drinks, concentrates and syrups in the future.
It should be noted here that even when the dipeptide sweeteners are used in the form of blends with other sweeteners, namely both with other intensive sweeteners (such as acesulfame-K, saccharin or cyclamate) and with carbohydrate sweeteners (such as fructose, sucrose (=saccharose), glucose syrups or so-called high fructose corn syrups (“HFCS”)), these blends are considered to be included in the definition of dipeptide sweeteners for the purposes of the present patent application.
The term “fructosyl saccharide”, as used at the beginning of this patent application, includes all trisaccharides or higher saccharides which contain one or more fructose units. Such saccharides have a degree of polymerization (also referred to as “DP” or as “chain length”) greater than or equal to 3. Depending on their chain length, fructosyl saccharides can be subdivided into fructosyl oligosaccharides (i.e. fructosyl saccharides with a chain of up to 10 monosaccharides) and fructosyl polysaccharides (i.e. fructosyl saccharides with a chain consisting of 10 or more monosaccharides).
As has already been stated above, soft drinks, concentrates and syrups sweetened with a dipeptide sweetener and containing a fructosyl saccharide are known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,978,751. In the said patent certain fructosyl oligosaccharides are used as fructosyl saccharide, and aspartame is used as dipeptide sweetener. The fructosyl oligosaccharides used in U.S. Pat. No. 4,978,751 generally contain 3 to 8 carbohydrate units linked via &bgr; bonds, with a terminal fructose molecule, and are intended as low-calorie substitutes for sugar in dietetic products. In particular, trisaccharides of the type glucose +sucrose (i.e. glucose-glucose-fructose), such as sophorofructose (&bgr;-1,2), laminaribiofructose (&bgr;-1,3), cellobiofructose (&bgr;-1,4) or gentiobiofructose (&bgr;-1,6), are recommended. The fructosyl oligosaccharides in question, which in fact might rather be thought of as glucosyl oligosaccharides with a terminal fructose unit, turn out to be very stable against enzymatic hydrolysis and have a sweet taste; they are therefore recommended as a low-calorie sweetener for use in dietetic products. In the said publication no mention is made of significant chemical hydrolysis of such products. Nor is any example given in the publication of the use of a combination of a fructosyl (oligo)-saccharide with aspartame in a soft drink, concentrate or syrup; only sorbets, pasta and ice cream products are manufactured.
It should also be noted that examples are known of squashes sweetened with dipeptide sweetener and fructose; in soft drinks obtained with such squashes, fructose makes a significant contribution to the sweetening power from the outset, apart from the effect on the flavour quality, partly because of the effect on the so-called “mouthfeel”. Examples of such squashes are “Robinson's Whole Orange Drink Concentrate” and “Robinson's Apple & Blackcurrant Juice Drink” from Colman's, Norwich (UK), and “Amigo Blackcurrant Drink”, from Batchelors Ltd., Dublin (Irish Republic). Soft drinks are also known in which, in addition to aspartame or alitame, syrups with a high fructose content are present, in particular the so-called “high fructose corn syrups”. See for example EP-A-0301653, in which calcium-enriched drinks and concentrates of this type are described.
As is known from the chapter “Aspartame: implications for the food scientist”, by B. E. Homler (in “Aspartame: Physiology and Biochemistry, Ed. L. D. Stegink and L. J Filer jr., Marcel Dekker Inc., New York, 1984, pp. 247-262), when dipeptide sweeteners such as aspartame (APM) are used in soft drinks, where because of the use of all kinds of buffer systems the pH is usually in the range from 2.5 to 4.5, there is slow breakdown of the dipeptide sweetener, and so the sweetness of the soft drink gradually decreases, with the result that the storage stability in terms of sweetness (the “sweetness shelf-life”) is limited in practice. This is particularly the case with storage conditions where a temperature of 25° C. is exceeded, perhaps temporarily; the sweetness shelf-life may then be limited to a few months. The same thing obviously also applies to soft drinks, concentrates and syrups which are sweetened with dipeptide sweeteners and which also contain another sweetener, e.g. fructose, although their shelf-life (in terms of sweetening power) will improve with the presence of an increasing (and continuously present) concentration of the other sweetener, e.g. fructose, because then the relative effect of the loss of sweetening power by the dipeptide sweetener is less.
There is thus a need for soft drinks, concentrates and syrups sweetened with a dipeptide sweetener, and containing a fructosyl saccharide, in which the sweetness intensity remains stable for a longer time, e.g. at least three to six months at 20-25 ° C., and which thus have a good sweetness shelf-life.
Surprisingly it has now been found that soft drinks, concentrates and syrups sweetened with a dipeptide sweetener, e.g. aspartame, and containing a fructosyl saccharide, retain a stable or virtually stable level of sweetness for a much longer time than was previously usual if
(a) the fructosyl saccharide is a fructan, with
(1) the fructosyl units mainly being linked via a &bgr;-2,1 bond;
(2) the chain length of the fructan being in the range from 3 to 100 units; and
(3) the modal and the mean chain length each being at least 4.75; and
(b) the pH of the soft drink, concentrate or syrup is in the range from approximately 2.5 to approximately 4.0.
In this way the result is achieved that soft drinks, concentrates and syrups sweetened with a dipeptide sweetener and containing a fructosyl saccharide retain a virtually stable level of sweetness for a long time, e.g. 3 to 6 months at a temperature o
Admiraal Alida G. M.
Hoek Annette C.
Rooyakkers Maria M. A.
Holland Sweetener Company V.O.F.
Pillsbury & Winthrop LLP
Wong Leslie
LandOfFree
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