Patent Pick: Highly Potent Dairy Sweetener

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Patent Picks are chosen by the editors from publicly available sources. Today's choice from Coca-Cola is a dairy composition having a highly potent sweet taste.

Highly potent dairy sweetener composition
U.S. Patent 9149051
Publication date: Oct. 6, 2015
Assignee: The Coca-Cola Company

According to this patent, the sweet taste of natural or synthetic high-potency sweeteners is slower in onset and longer in duration than the sweet taste produced by sugar. Thus, they change the taste balance of food compositions. Due to these differences, using natural high-potency sweeteners to replace a bulk sweetener such as sugar causes an unbalanced temporal profile and/or flavor profile.

Furthermore, high-potency sweeteners generally exhibit lower maximal response than sugar; off-tastes including bitter, metallic, cooling, astringent, licorice-like, etc.; and/or sweetness that diminishes on iterative tasting. If the taste profile of such high-potency sweeteners could be modified to be more sugar-like, their application could be significantly expanded.

In response, the present invention addresses this need by providing a dairy composition that has an improved temporal profile and flavor profile. The composition includes a dairy product; at least one high-potency sweetener; and at least one sweet taste improving composition.

This patent also relates to compositions and methods that can improve the tastes of non-caloric or low-caloric natural and/or synthetic, high-potency sweeteners by imparting a more sugar-like taste or characteristic. As stated, these compositions provide a more sugar-like temporal profile, including sweetness onset and sweetness linger, and/or a more sugar-like flavor profile.

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