Publisher's Synopsis
This book is addressed to all workers in the field of sweetness. This is a multidisciplinary subject, involving chemists, biochemists, physiologists, phychophysicists, food scientists, nutritionists and other scientists, and is best summarized by the term "chemoreception".;What has become clear in recent years is that very many different types of chemical structure are able to elicit the same basic sensation of sweetness. Arguably, there is a common chemical feature in all of these structures and this book addresses the question of whether such a common "glucophore" exists and how it may be identified. Although many books have already been written on sweetness and sweeteners, this one is committed to the elucidation of the sweet taste chemoreception mechanism. A feature of the book is the discussion of the role of water and water structure and its interaction with sweet molecules. The evaluation of water-solute interaction aids the understanding of the sweet taste mechanism and the eventual prediction of sweet taste effects.;Sugars are the common natural sweeteners in our diet and they seem to elicit a pure and recognisably familiar sweet response. Many chapters describe the now well-understood nature of sugar molecules and their hydrogen-bonding properties. A further inclusion in this book is the set of colour photographs of hydrophilic and hydrophobic regions of sweet molecules generated by computer calculations. These can be compared with the experimentally derived measurements of sweeteners to confirm the factual basis of our observations. We are now at the threshold of the understanding of sweet taste chemoreception and the optimisation of sweet taste quality in foods.
