Quality control of non-nutritive sweeteners with NIR spectroscopy

The use of non-nutritive sweeteners as sugar substitutes in foodstuffs has risen dramatically in the last decade, e.g., in soft drinks and snacks. Two examples are sucralose, a halogenated sucrose derivative, and Stevia, derived from the leaves of the Stevia rebaudiana plant. Both are much sweeter than sugar and are used in much lower concentrations in foodstuffs. To ensure food safety, regulations for non-nutritive sweeteners are becoming stricter. Several analytical methods are available to determine various sweeteners using, e.g., high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), ion chromatography, and thin-layer chromatography. However, these methods are time-consuming and incur high running costs. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) allows the simultaneous determination of several sweeteners in less than one minute without any chemicals or sample preparation.

Mixtures of both Stevia (0.5–4.5%) and sucralose (0.5–4.5%) in sucrose (95%) were prepared and analyzed to create a prediction model for quantification.

Samples were measured with a Metrohm NIRS DS2500 Solid Analyzer (Figure 1) using 15 mm disposable vials, a DS2500 holder, and a DS2500 Iris in reflection mode. The Metrohm software package Vision Air Complete was used for all data acquisition and prediction model development.

All measured Vis-NIR spectra (Figure 2) were used to create a prediction model for quantification of sucralose and Stevia in sucrose. The quality of the prediction models was evaluated using correlation diagrams which display a very high correlation between the Vis-NIR prediction and the reference values. The respective figures of merit (FOM) display the expected precision of a prediction during routine analysis (Figures 3–4).