1 Sweetness and sensory properties of commercial and novel oligosaccharides of 2 prebiotic potential 3 4 Laura Ruiz-Aceitunoa, Oswaldo Hernandez-Hernandeza, Sofia Kolidab, F. Javier 5 Morenoa,* and Lisa Methvenc 6 7 a Institute of Food Science Research, CIAL (CSIC-UAM), Nicolás Cabrera 9, 28049 8 Madrid (Spain) 9 b OptiBiotix Health plc, Innovation Centre, Innovation Way, Heslington, York YO10 10 5DG (UK) 11 c Sensory Science Centre, Department of Food and Nutritional Sciences, The University 12 of Reading, PO Box 226, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AP (UK) 13 14 *Corresponding author:
[email protected] Tel (+34) 91 0017948 1 15 Abstract 16 This study investigates the sweetness properties and other sensory attributes of ten 17 commercial and four novel prebiotics (4-galactosyl-kojibiose, lactulosucrose, lactosyl- 18 oligofructosides and raffinosyl-oligofructosides) of high degree of purity and assesses the 19 influence of their chemical structure features on sweetness. The impact of the type of 20 glycosidic linkage by testing four sucrose isomers, as well as the monomer composition 21 and degree of polymerization on sweetness properties were determined. Data from the 22 sensory panel combined with principal component analysis (PCA) concludes that chain 23 length was the most relevant factor in determining the sweetness potential of a 24 carbohydrate. Thus, disaccharides had higher sweetness values than trisaccharides which, 25 in turn, exhibited superior sweetness than mixtures of oligosaccharides having DP above 26 3. Furthermore, a weak non-significant trend indicated that the presence of a ketose sugar 27 moiety led to higher sweetness. The novel prebiotics tested in this study had between 18 28 and 25% of relative sweetness, in line with other commercial prebiotics, and samples 29 varied in their extent of off flavour.