Food Chemistry: Artificial Sweeteners and Preservatives

• Sugar substitutes are substances that are used in place of sweeteners with sugar (sucrose) or sugar alcohols. They may also be called artificial sweeteners.
  
• Natural sweeteners add to calorie intake and therefore many people prefer to use artificial sweeteners.
  
• Aspartame is the most successful and widely used artificial sweetener. It is roughly 100 times as sweet as cane sugar. It is methyl ester of dipeptide formed from aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Use of aspartame is limited to cold foods and soft drinks because it is unstable at cooking temperature.

Antioxidants are added to food to prevent it from spoiling.

Surolose is trichloro derivative of sucrose. Its appearance and taste are like sugar.

• Antiseptics are applied to the living tissues such as wounds, cuts, ulcers and diseased skin surfaces. Iodoform is used as an antiseptic for wounds.
  
• Alitame is high potency Artificial sweetener, the control of sweetness of food is difficult while using it.
• Prontosil, also called sulfamidochrysoidine, trade name of the first synthetic drug used in the treatment of general bacterial infections in humans.It is an Antibacterial agent.
  
• Antihistamines interfere with the natural action of histamine by competing with histamine for binding sites of receptor where histamine exerts its effect.Synthetic drugs, brompheniramine (Dimetapp) and terfenadine (Seldane), act as antihistamines.

Louis Pasteur discovered fermentation.

Aspartame is the artificial sweetener, which is 100 times more sweet than cane sugar. It is methyl ester of dipeptide formed from aspartic acid and phenylalanine.

Aspartame is unstable at cooking temperature, hence it can used in soft drinks and cold drinks for artificial sweetening.

Bacteria cannot survive in salt conditions as water is completely extracted by salt due to its hygroscopic nature.

Metanil yellow adulteration in foods can be identified upon addition of HCl to the solution. 

BVO stands for brominated vegetable oil which is a food additive sometimes used to keep citrus flavoring from separating out in some sodas and sports drinks.

Codex alimentarius commision was created in 1963 by FAO and WHO to develop food standards guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under to joint FAO/WHO food standards programme. The main purpose of this program are protecting health of the consumer and ensuring fair trade practices in food trade.

Liquid nitrogen has many uses, mainly based on its cold temperature and low reactivity. Examples of common applications include:

The sweetening power relative to sucrose is: Alitame (2000) > Saccharin (550) > Aspartame (160). Therefore, the correct order is III > I > II.

Artificial sweeteners enhance the taste but will not enhance the nutritional value. Whereas minerals, vitamins and amino acid will increase the nutritional value as they are the important constituents of nutrition.

Sugar does produce energy through metabolic decomposition (approximately 4 kcal/g), which is true. The popularity of low-calorie drinks is also an observable market trend. However, framing these as connected facts makes for an odd true/false question.

Various chemicals are added to food. They are called food additives and are flavours and sweeteners, food colours (dyes), fat emulsifiers and stablising agents, flour improvers antistaling agents and bleaches, antioxidants, preservatives and nutritional supplements.
Thus, only few chemicals added to food items are called food preservatives.
and Only few chemicals increase the nutritive value of the food.
Hence, both Assertion and Reason are incorrect.

A. Both Assertion and Reason are correct and Reason is the correct explanation for Assertion.

Artificial sweeteners are added to the food to control the intake of calories.
Most of the artificial sweeteners are inert and do not metabolise in the body.

For diabetic patients, sugar cannot be used as a sweetening agent. Artificial sweetening agents that are non-nutritive in nature are used as substituents for sugar (specially in soft drinks). 

Artificial sweeteners are used in one of two ways. They may be used directly in commercially processed foods, or they are mixed with one or more starch-based sweeteners before sale to consumers. Artificial sweeteners are so intensely sweet that dextrose or maltodextrin, or both, must be added to dilute their intense sweetness in order to imitate the sweetness of a sugar. Artificial sweeteners can not be sold directly to consumers since only infinitesimally small amounts are required to mimic sugar’s sweet taste. All of the given compounds are artificial sweeteners.

Bacteria do not grow at low-temperatures. So, food is stored at low-temperatures in refrigerator.

Sodium nitrite and nitrate closely are related chemicals that have been used for centuries to preserve meat. While nitrate itself is harmless, it easily converts to nitrite, which when combined with secondary-amine compounds forms nitrosamines, a powerful cancer-exacerbating chemical. This chemical reaction occurs easily during the frying process.