Abstract
Steviol glycosides are used in food and beverages worldwide as natural sweeteners, serving as a low-calorie sugar substitute. The acceptable daily intake of steviol is 0–4 mg/kg body weight. The rising demand for dairy products has led to a corresponding increase in the use of steviol glycosides in such products. Therefore, it is important to analyze the levels of steviol glycosides in dairy products. Dairy products have high fat contents and unique emulsion characteristics, conferred by a mixture of fat globules, casein micelles, whey proteins, and numerous other small molecules. These characteristics may interfere with the estimation of steviol glycoside levels; therefore, dairy samples require pretreatment. We aimed to develop an objective test for measuring the levels of steviol glycosides through the development of an efficient pretreatment method. In this study, the steviol glycoside content in dairy products was evaluated by using various methods, and an optimal pretreatment method was determined. We used high-performance liquid chromatography to assess the selectivity, linearity, limit of detection, limit of quantification, accuracy, precision, and recovery rate. Calibration curves were linear in the range of 1–50 mg/kg, with a coefficient of determination of ≥0.999. The limit of detection and limit of quantification were in the ranges of 0.11–0.56 and 0.33–1.69 mg/kg, respectively. The relative standard deviation (%) represents the precision of a measurement. The RSD relative standard deviationof recovery varied between 0.16% and 2.83%, and recovery of the analysis varied between 83.57% and 104.84%. These results demonstrate the reliability of the method for measuring the steviol glycoside content. This method can be used for the simple pretreatment of steviol glycosides and can provide an accurate determination of steviol glycoside content in emulsified food matrices, such as dairy products.
Highlights
Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni is a potential source of natural non-caloric sweeteners that may serve as substitutes for synthetic sweeteners
Five pretreatment methods for fermented milk samples were evaluated to select the best conditions for extracting steviol glycosides (Figure 2)
The sample peak obtained after this treatment overlapped with the solvent peak at a retention time of 2 min; the presence of steviol glycosides could not be ascertained, and no peaks corresponding to the samples could be confirmed (Figure 2a)
Summary
Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni is a potential source of natural non-caloric sweeteners that may serve as substitutes for synthetic sweeteners. The high sweetness of its components makes it an attractive substitute for sugar in the food industry [2]. The sweetening effect of Stevia is attributable to the fact that it contains glycosides of the aglycone steviol [5,6,7,8]. 40 steviol glycosides have been identified in the leaves of S. rebaudiana [9,10]. This plant has a very high sweetness potential because of its high content of diterpene glycosides, such as stevioside; rebaudioside A, C, and D; and dulcoside A [1]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
