Elsevier

Food Chemistry

Volume 69, Issue 3, 15 May 2000, Pages 245-257
Food Chemistry

Neotame: discovery, properties, utility

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0308-8146(99)00254-XGet rights and content

Abstract

Neotame (NTM) is a new nonnutritive sweetener. NTM is a derivative of aspartame (APM). NTM has a clean sweet taste and a good flavour profile. It is a high-potency sweetener; it is 6000–10 000 times sweeter than sucrose, and 30–60 times sweeter than APM. NTM is a noncaloric, noncariogenic sweetener. NTM has an extensive shelf life in dry conditions. In aqueous food systems, it presents the same functionalities as APM in acidic medium, but it is significantly more stable in neutral medium. Consequently, NTM should be a useful sweetener in baked goods. NTM is compatible with reducing sugars and aldehyde-based flavouring agents. It has flavour-enhancing properties. Its relative cost is expected to be lower than sucrose or APM at sweetness equivalence. A petition was filed in the USA in December 1998 for its approval as a general use sweetener; other regulatory activities are underway in several countries.

Introduction

Neotame (NTM) is a new high-potency nonnutritive sweetener which is considered as the potential successor of aspartame (APM). As a close derivative of APM (Fig. 1), it has the intrinsic qualities of APM which were at the root of the APM commercial success, notably a very clean sweet taste, close to sucrose, with no undesirable bitter or metallic off-taste which occur in other well-known artificial sweeteners. Moreover, neotame offers additional salient advantages, such as: a status, at use levels, of a no-calorie sweetener; an increase of stability in the neutral pH range which strongly improves or widens the APM applications (e.g. in baked goods); a chemical inertness towards reducing sugars and aldehydic derivatives allowing its association with reducing sugars (glucose, fructose, high-fructose corn syrup, maltose, lactose, etc.) and flavouring agents based on aldehydic constituents (vanillin, ethyl vanillin, cinnamaldehyde, benzaldehyde, citral, etc.); an insignificant release of methanol and phenylalanine into the organism after NTM intake (with, in particular, no possible hazard for phenylketonuric subjects); a foreseeable highly competitive relative cost (cost per sucrose equivalent) as a result of its high sweetness potency. The purpose of this brief account is to answer the three questions often asked about neotame: How was it discovered? What are its properties? What is its utility?

Section snippets

Discovery

In 1991, from extensive structure–activity relationship studies in the field of high-potency sweetening agents (particularly by using our own findings in various sweetener series — [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20]), we proposed, at an ECRO Symposium (see Nofre & Tinti, 1993a), that the human sweetness receptor (HSR) may contain two clearly distinct hydrophobic binding pockets located ∼1 nm apart.

At that time, it was widely accepted that aspartame (APM) interacts with the HSR

Properties

The major characteristics (chemical, physical and biological properties) of neotame are summarized in Table 3. A comparison (similarities and differences) between the main properties of aspartame and neotame is summed up in Table 4; more detailed features on aspartame can be found in the following articles, books or general reviews: [1], [2], [3], [4], [7], [10], [11], [32], [39], [33], [34], [36], [37].

Neotame (abbreviated NTM) is the generic name for N-[N-(3,3-dimethylbutyl)-l–α-aspartyl]-l

Utility

NTM is a nonnutritive, noncaloric sweetening agent. Because the caloric value of APM is estimated, as a dipeptide, to be 17 kJ/g (4 kcal/g), and as NTM is made up of ∼75% by weight of APM, the inferred caloric value of NTM should be ∼12 kJ/g (3 kcal/g); in fact, since less than 10% by weight of NTM is really metabolized in the body via a minor metabolic route (see Fig. 14), it follows that the effective caloric value of NTM should be less than 1.2 kJ/g (< 0.3 kcal/g). As APM is ∼200 times as

Conclusions

NTM outstandingly meets the five basic criteria requisite for commercial viability of a nonnutritive sweetener, namely, taste, solubility, stability, safety, and cost.

NTM provides a clean sweet taste, with a good flavour profile and consumer acceptance; it is a highly potent sweetener, with a potency, on a weight basis, 30 to 60 times that of APM, and 6000 to 10 000 times that of sucrose. In aqueous systems, its solubility is several hundreds of times higher than necessary to match a 10%

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by The NutraSweet Company, Chicago, IL 60654, USA. Data presented in this review represent the efforts of many individuals of The NutraSweet Company whom we thank for their essential contribution to this work. The authors are particularly grateful to Jerry Hjelle, Jeff Hoster, Frank Kotsonis, Po Lui, Waine Stargel, Etienne Veber and John Witt, for their major role in the development of neotame.

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