Aspartame Determination in Soft Drinks

Aspartame is an artificial sweetener used as a substitute for sugar in many soft drinks, beverages and some foods. It is a combination of phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol. It has a caloric value of 17 KJ per gram like other protein substance. An Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) of aspartame is 40-50 mg/kg body weight/day; it helps the diabetics to improve their quality of life. Higher conc. leads to various side effects such as physical weakness, decrease in night vision, insomnia, mental depression, anxiety, feeling aggressive, diarrhea and weight loss etc. So the determination of aspartame in soft drinks and fruit juice is important from biological point of view. Though there are many technique Though there are many technique for its estimation but present work will focused on its estimation in the fruit juices by colorimetric method which is easy, cheap and can be done in any lab. Colorimetric method shows best absorbance at 406 nm. These values are compared with standard curve and find out corresponding concentration. Sofit soya milk sample showed highest aspartame value and Delmonte peach showed least value.