Artificial Sweeteners Without The Aftertaste
Reported May 28, 2010
(Ivanhoe Newswire) — Researchers have discovered a chemical that specifically blocks people’s ability to experience the bitter aftertaste of artificial sweeteners such as saccharin. The key is a molecule known as GIV3727 that specifically targets and inhibits a handful of human bitter taste receptors.
According to the researchers, the discovery of the first commercially relevant small-molecule bitter taste inhibitor also opens the door to further discovery of compounds for other taste-enhancement purposes, such as masking the unpleasant taste of medicines or other commonly encountered bitter flavors.
“To our knowledge, this is the first published example of a bitter receptor inhibitor with taste activity in humans,” Jay Slack of Givaudan Flavors Corporation in Cincinnati, was quoted as saying. “We applied high-throughput screening and medicinal chemistry approaches to develop specific inhibitors for human bitter taste receptors. While these methods are commonly used in the development of new drug candidates, ours is the first successful application of this technology for bitter taste modulation. This flavoring substance could be broadly used to improve the palatability of foods and beverages containing acesulfame K and saccharin.”
Acesulfame K is a calorie-free sweetener sold as Sunett and Sweet One. Saccharin comes in the familiar little pink packets under the trade name Sweet’N Low.
“Recent evidence indicates that some bitter receptors are also expressed in other nongustatory tissues with proposed roles in the detection of noxious airborne chemicals or regulation of glucose homeostasis via the gastrointestinal tract,” the researchers said. “Bitter receptor antagonists hold promise as tools to explore the role of bitter receptor signaling in these other systems.”
Controlled human taste tests of artificially sweetened solutions with and without GIV3727 confirmed that the ingredient had the desired effect. That is, almost everyone selected the beverages containing GIV3727 as being significantly less bitter. Importantly, GIV3727 did not interfere with participants’ ability to taste sweetness.
The researchers said that there remains some possibility that GIV3727 might work for some people a little better than it does for others, noting that even though the chemical completely abolished bitter taste receptors in the laboratory, some people were apparently still able to detect bitterness to some degree.
SOURCE: Current Biology, May 27, 2010