Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni, an ancient perennial shrub of South America, produces diterpene glycosides that are low calorie sweeteners, about 300 times sweeter than saccharose. Stevia extracts, besides having therapeutic properties, contain a high level of sweetening compounds, known as steviol glycosides, which are thought to possess antioxidant, antimicrobial and antifungal activity. Steviosid...

A remarkable amount of information has emerged in the past decade regarding sweet taste physiology. This article reviews these data,with a particular focus on the elucidation of the sweet taste receptor, its location and actions in taste transduction in themouth, its nontaste functions in the gastrointestinal tract (e.g., in enteroendocrine cells), and the brain circuitry involved in the sensor...

Consumers often turn to non-caloric sweeteners (NCS) as a means of promoting a healthy body weight. However, several studies have now linked their long-term use to increased weight gain, raising the question of whether these products produce unintended psychological, physiological, or behavioral changes that have implications for weight management goals. In the following, we present the results...

observed. It was mainly due to the developments in biological studies, the change of a population lifestyle and the increase in the consumer awareness concerning food products. The health quality of food depends mainly on nutrients, but also on foreign substances such as food additives. The presence of foreign substances in the food can be justified, allowed or tolerated only when they are harm...

Miraculin (MCL) is a homodimeric protein isolated from the fruits of Richadella dulcifica, a shrub native to West Africa. Although it is flat in taste at neutral pH, MCL has taste-modifying activity in which sour stimuli produce a sweet perception. Once MCL enters the mouth, strong sweetness can be detected for more than 1 h each time we taste a sour solution. While the human sweet taste recept...

In September of 2000, McNeil Nutritionals began marketing Splenda, its new no-calorie sweetener, using the tagline “made from sugar so it tastes like sugar.”1 The company spent approximately $235 million in advertising and promotional materials to establish its unique brand identity that capitalizes on Splenda’s sugar origin and sugar-like taste.2 The campaign was effective—in 2007, Splenda was...

Sweeteners elicit pleasurable sensations with (nutritive) or without (nonnutritive) energy. Nutritive sweeteners (eg, sucrose, fructose) are generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), yet concern exists about increasing sweetener intakes relative to optimal nutrition and health. Dietary quality suffers at intakes above 25% of total energy (the Institutes of M...