Thaumatin
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Thaumatin is a mixture of proteins isolated from the katemfe fruit (Thaumatococcus daniellii Bennett) of west Africa. These proteins are natural sweeteners roughly 2000 times more potent than sugar. Although very sweet, thaumatin's taste is markedly different from sugar's. The sweetness of thaumatin builds very slowly, and upon fading leaves a lingering aftertaste that some find unpleasant. Some people report licorice-like elements in its flavor. Thaumatin is highly water-soluble, and stable to heating under acidic conditions.
Within west Africa, the katemfe fruit has been locally cultivated and used to flavor foods and beverages for some time. The fruit's seeds are encased in a membranous sac, or aril, that is the source of thaumatin. In the 1970s, the Talin Food Company of Merseyside, in the United Kingdom, began extracting thaumatin from the fruit and selling it under the trade name Talin. In 1990, researchers at Unilever reported the isolation and sequencing of the two principal proteins found in thaumatin, which they dubbed thaumatin I and thaumatin II. These researchers were also able express thaumatin in genetically engineered bacteria.
Thaumatin has been approved as a sweetener in the European Union, Israel, and Japan. In the United States, it is a Generally Recognized as Safe flavoring agent, but as of 2005 it is not approved as a sweetener.
References
- J.D. Higginbotham, in Alternative Sweeteners, L.O. Nabors and R.C. Gelardi, eds., Marcel Dekker, Inc., New York, 1986.de:Thaumatin