Abstract
The consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages has been related with the risk of cardiovascular diseases and other pathophysiological situations, such as obesity or diabetes mellitus. Given the increasing awareness on this fact, food industries are developing new products to reduce the amount of added sugar in development of food products development. Accordingly, in the present work, new functional beverages, constituting a dietary source of bioactive phenolics and supplemented with stevia or sucrose, were designed in order to study the influence of the sweetener during processing and shelf-life. This study is of critical for the informed selection of the sweetener based on its effect on the final phytochemical profile of beverages, especially taking into consideration that there are no previous studies on Stevia rebaudiana. Physicochemical features and phytochemical composition, as well as stability of the different beverages concerning these parameters, were evaluated for 90 days during storage under different conditions (refrigeration (4 °C) and room temperature (25 °C) under light or darkness conditions). Physicochemical parameters (pH, titratable acidity, total soluble solids, and color) did not display statistically significant differences between beverages. Storage temperature was the greatest determinant affecting the stability of all the analyzed bioactive compounds (vitamin C, anthocyanins, and flavanones). The main difference between sweeteners was observed in flavanones, which exhibited a higher loss during storage under day light conditions when stevia was added instead of sucrose. In addition, the juices’ colors were rather stable, keeping a reddish coloration and natural appearance throughout the shelf life. Hence, stevia could be considered as an alternative sweetener by the beverage industry.
Highlights
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the main cause of human death, responsible for up to 17.9 million deaths per year (31.0% of global deaths)
This fact could be attributed to an outstanding stability of sucrose during heating, under both low and neutral pH conditions, and to the chemical degradation of stevia under extreme conditions of high temperature and pH [27]
The new designed beverages, based on maqui berry and citrus juices, have shown similar stability, regardless the sweetener added, of all the analyzed quality parameters, indicating that they could have promising health-promoting effects according to their content in bioactive vitamin C and phenolic compounds
Summary
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the main cause of human death, responsible for up to 17.9 million deaths per year (31.0% of global deaths) (http://www.who.int, 2019). A controversy regarding the use of artificial sweeteners exists because of their effect on the caloric intake and obesity [6] as well as a growing interest in natural sweeteners (stevia—Stevia rebaudiana—for instance) instead of artificial ones. In this aspect, stevia is of special interest, due to the healthy attributes reported in the scientific literature for this sweetener, such as antibacterial, diuretic, anti-inflammatory, anticarcinogenic, and antioxidant properties as well as their functionality as hyperglycemic and hypertensive inhibitors, among others [7,8]. Recent studies have suggested stevia as protective for diverse phytochemical compounds, such as anthocyanins or vitamin C in model systems [9], the scientific literature regarding interactions between stevia and other food components is still scarce and this issue merits to be further explored
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