DETERMINATION OF ACTIVE SWEETENING AGENT IN SOME NATURAL SWEETNERS USED AS SUBSTITUTE TO PROCESSED SUGAR.

Abstract

Natural sweeteners are preferable over artificial sweeteners because of its nutritional benefits, it Is of a great interest to research on replacement of artificial sweeteners with natural sweeteners. The self produced natural sweeteners was extracted from there various plant sources and they are date syrup, grape sugar alcohol,honey, coconut sugar and Jaggery. Further analysis were carried out on some of these natural sweeteners such as total sugar content determination  using refractometer, reducing sugar determination using  Benedict reagents and sensory evaluation test. The results of these analysis that was carried out on some of these natural sweeteners are as follows, for total sugar content determination, the results of date syrup, coconut sugar, honey, grape sugar alcohol and Jaggery are 83.17,84.83,81.85, 8.12 and 17.90 respectively. Benedict test that was carried out were determined by there colour change during heating process, were the colourchanges from colourless solution  to either blue,  orange, red PPT, and greenish yellow PPT,  the results on the sweeteners shows blue,  brick red PPT, green yellow PPT, orange and blue  for coconut sugar, date sugar, Jaggery sugar, honey and grape sugar alcohol respectively while the sensory evaluation test that was carried out by volunteered persons results at 10%,1%,0.1% and 0.01%  only grape sugar alcohols that maintain it's baseline test  at 0.01%% while other samples are tasteless at 0.01%.natural sweeteners are highly nutritive and maintains it's vitamins even after processing.