1023
Application of Non-Nutritive Natural Sweeteners to Skim Chocolate Milk
The additional sugar content of chocolate milk has raised health concerns, and artificial non-nutritive sweeteners have been used to reduce sugar and calories. However, artificial sweeteners lack appeal to parents for purchase of chocolate milk for their children. Natural non-nutritive sweeteners may be viable alternatives to sweeten chocolate milk. The objective of this study was to evaluate stevia or monk fruit extract as the sole or partial sweetener source for skim chocolate milk. Magnitude estimation scaling (MES) with 14 trained panelists was used to create power function curves for the sweet taste of stevia and monk fruit extract in water and skim chocolate milk. The iso-sweetness of 150 mM sucrose chocolate milk, the lowest acceptable sweetness level for young adult consumers in a previous study, from stevia or monk fruit extract were calculated and confirmed by a 2-alternative forced choice (AFC) test with 25 panelists. Due to other taste and flavor attributes of the two natural non-nutritive sweeteners, iso-sweetness from a mixture of sucrose and natural non-nutritive sweetener were also investigated. Chocolate milks (sweetened with sucrose, stevia, monk fruit, stevia:sucrose blend, or monk fruit:sucrose blend) were manufactured and evaluated by young adult consumers (n= 120) for overall and sweet taste liking. Chocolate milks that were sweetened by natural non-nutritive sweeteners alone received lower liking scores compared to chocolate milks sweetened by sucrose or sucrose:non-nutritive sweetener blends (p<0.05). The results demonstrate that natural non-nutritive sweeteners can be successfully applied in chocolate milks with no change in liking from sucrose when applied as blends replacing up to 50% of sucrose.
Keywords: chocolate milk, flavor, sugar reduction