Title: Alternative Sweeteners

Aspartame-Acesulfame: Twinsweet 483
aldehyde attack, and the salt can be used successfully to create products of acceptable
shelf-life.
It will be apparent, however, that the advantages of aspartame-acesulfame
are not confined to its physicochemical properties as a solid. Because it provides
two sweetening components in each molecule of the crystalline material, the salt
represents a saving on the number of raw materials to be purchased, stored, and
handled. In addition, the salt is a more concentrated source of sweetness than
the blend because it is free of potassium and lower in moisture content. As a
result, the sweetener-sweetener salt provides 11% more sweetness on a weightfor-weight
basis than the corresponding equimolar blend, which is a modest but
real advantage to those handling large quantities of low-calorie sweeteners.
Finally, aspartame-acesulfame poses no new toxicological issues. The
sweetener-sweetener salt dissociates immediately on solution in water. In doing
so it releases the same sweetener molecules that would be present were a mere
mixture of aspartame and acesulfame-K to have been used. Consequently, the
consumer is exposed only to known, permitted sweeteners.
For all the above reasons, aspartame-acesulfame was the sweetenersweetener
salt preferred for commercial development, and these and other attributes
of Twinsweet are discussed further below.
II. PRODUCTION
In the patented process (2), aspartame-acesulfame is made by combining aspartame
and acesulfame-K in an aqueous acid solution. The trans-salification reaction
is depicted in Fig. 1. The sweetener-sweetener salt is subsequently crystallized,
separated, washed, and dried.
All the components used are commercially available and of food grade. No
unusual forms of the sweeteners and no organic solvents are used. No additional
purification of the salt is necessary. This is because, as is apparent from Figure
1, the preparation of the salt is, in effect, also a recrystallization of the starting
materials. As might be expected of such a process, the resultant aspartameacesulfame
has a higher degree of purity than even the food-grade raw materials.
Moreover, the process introduces no new impurities, and so neatly combines
synthesis with purification.
III. PHYSICAL AND OTHER DATA
Table 1 lists the main characteristics of aspartame-acesulfame.