Effects Of Aryloxycarboxylic Acids On Sweetness Intensity Of Food

Aryloxycarboxylic acids can inhibit sweetness. They not only can reduce the sweetnessintensity effectively with the amount of sweetener does not change, but also has no effects onthe other features of sweetener and the flavor of food. And sodium2-(4-methoxyphenoxy)propionate (Na-PMP) has a wide range of applications in the food industry as a kind ofaryloxycarboxylic acids. Therefore Na-PMP was selected to study the sweetness inhibitionefficiency of aryloxycarboxylic acids.In order to study the effects of ion on the sweetness inhibition efficiency, Zn-PMP wasfirstly synthesized. Then the inhibition efficiency of Na-PMP、Zn-PMP and HPMP wascompared and the inhibition efficiency of them on series of sweeteners as well as sweet, bitter,sour, salty and umami were examined. The results showed that there was no difference foundamong the sweetness inhibition efficiency of Na-PMP、Zn-PMP and HPMP, so the ion had noeffect on the sweetness inhibition efficiency. However, they all appeared no effects on theother four tastes.For there was a chiral carbon atom in the molecular structure of Na-PMP and opticalactivity would affect the pjysical and chemical properties, S-Na-PMP and R-Na-PMP werethen synthesized to study the effects of optical activity on the inhibition sweetness efficiency.Then the inhibition efficiency of S-Na-PMP、R-Na-PMP and Na-PMP was compared, and theinhibition efficiency of S-Na-PMP and R-Na-PMP on series of sweeteners as well as sweet,bitter, sour, salty and umami were examined. The results showed the sweetness inhibitionefficiency of S-Na-PMP was similar with Na-PMP, while R-Na-PMP didn’t have the ability ofsweetness inhibition. What’s more, both S-Na-PMP and R-Na-PMP couldn’t change theintensity of the other four tastes.At last, as there is no explicit means for the measurement of sweetness and nounified consensus for the sweetness inhibition mechanism, the interactions betweenfullerenols and sweeteners or fullerenols and Na-PMP were studied by molecular dynamics(MD) simulation, with fullerenols C60(OH)20as sweetness receptor. It was found thatfullerenols was effective to identify the different sweeteners, but fullerenols gave priority to identify Na-PMP, the interactions among Na-PMP, sweeteners and sweetness receptor werecompetitive. These conlusions further illustrated the artificial sweetness receptor was effectivefor research of sweetness mechanism.