Nutrinova GmbH earned US patent 6180155, 30 January, for “Sweetener having an improved sucrose-like taste and process for the preparation thereof and use thereof.”
Significantly, US the patent examiner (Leslie Wong in this case) has permitted the extreme artifice of “onethousandth…to …thousand” (see main claim below) to circumvent an important patent application requirement.
Besides Nutrinova, currently Rudolf-Wild GmbH, and earlier, Hoechst AG and Tate & Lyle Ltd. were active in this technology.
Abstract:
Sweetener having an improved sucrose-like taste and process for the preparation thereof and use thereof. A sweetener having improved sucrose-like taste which contains at least one synthetic sweetener or a mixture of different artificial sweeteners and at least one deoxysugar, in particular rhamnose or fucose. A process for the preparation of this sweetener and use thereof for the production of artificial sweeteners for table use, for sweetening foods and for improving flavor development in foods.
First of 11 Claims:
A method for modifying the taste profile of a taste-unmodified, acesulfame K-containing sweetener composition, so that the resulting modified sweetener composition more closely resembles the taste profile of sucrose, said method comprising, modifying said unmodified, acesulfame K-containing sweetener composition by adding an amount of rhamnose to said unmodified, acesulfame K-containing sweetener composition, which amount is sufficient to cause the taste profile imparted by acesulfame K to more closely resemble the taste profile of sucrose, and obtaining thereby said modified sweetener composition and from 1/1000 part by weight to 1000 parts by weight of rhamnose is added per part by weight of taste-unmodified sweetener composition.
By Navroz Havewala, just-food.com correspondent
