Formulating a New Passion Fruit Juice Beverage With Different Sweetener Systems

The aim of this work was to optimize the acceptability of a natural passion fruit beverage using different levels of passion fruit pulp and sucrose, and to determine the equi‐sweet concentrations of aspartame, sucralose, and a blend of 80% aspartame + 20% acesulfame‐K for the optimized formula. A 22 central composite design was used to optimize the acceptability of the sucrose‐sweetened beverage, which was accessed using a 9‐point structured hedonic scale. Acceptability data were fitted to a second‐order model equation provided in the design. The selected pulp content and sucrose concentration were, respectively, 2.5°Brix and 10%. Measurements of sweetness equivalence were accomplished using two types of sensory methods: magnitude estimation and difference‐from‐control tests. The concentrations of aspartame, sucralose and a blend of 80% aspartame + 20% acesulfame‐K found as equi‐sweet to 10% sucrose in the studied passion fruit beverage were, respectively, 0.043, 0.016 and 0.026%. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS This article deals with formulating a new passion fruit juice beverage with different sweetener systems. The research makes a very important contribution to the literature on sensory science used on product development by demonstrating the necessity to study the substitution of sucrose by high‐intensity sweeteners every time a formulation is changed or a new product is developed.