Lawless, HT

Chemical Senses [Chem. Senses], vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 447-451, Aug 1998

Some methods for examining the additivity of sweeteners and their synergy in mixtures depend upon setting component concentrations on the basis of sweetness equivalence, usually to a sucrose reference. These methods may under- or over-predict the sweetness of a mixture, leading to spurious claims of synergy or mixture suppression. This paper points out one problem with one such popular method, in that the method can lead to a conclusion that a substance would synergize with itself. To the extent that self-synergy is an illogical conclusion for a mixture comparison, such a method should be avoided in tests of synergy. The sweetness equivalence approach is contrasted with a simpler approach based on concentrations that does not lead to conclusions of self-synergy.