Hydrogen bonding implications on sweetness behavior of sugar alcohols in food model systems: A thermophysical and...

Sugar alcohols play an important role in the pharmaceutical and food industry due to their dominant effect on blood glucose levels and are used as artificial sweeteners in dairy products. The present study was conducted to explore the hydrogen bonding effect and sweetness response on structure-based properties of sugar alcohols (lactitol) in aqueous dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) using volumetric, acoustic, and FTIR techniques to get better considerations about mechanisms of sweet taste chemoreception and give valuable information about lactitol stabilization in the presence of DMSO, and solute-solvent interactions. Densities and sound velocities of sugar alcohol in aqueous DMSO solution have been measured at different temperatures, i.e., 293.15 K to 318.15 K and pressure 101 kPa. The experimental data has been further used to compute partial molar volume (∅_v^o), partial specific volume (SV^o), transfer of partial molar volume ∆_t∅_v⁰, partial compressibility (∅_K⁰) and partial expansibility (∅_E^°) etc. The positive partial molar volumes (∅_v^o) results indicated the importance of the sulfoxide group in expanding the structure and strengthening interactions. The partial specific volume (SV^o) values (0.671-0.688 cm³ g^-1), can predict the taste quality which is consistent with their ability to evoke a pure sweet taste. The negative values obtained from Hepler's equation confirmed the structure-breaking behavior of the lactitol in the presence of DMSO. The volumetric and acoustic results were verified by FTIR analyses, which showed strong correlations between the measurements and the FTIR spectra.