JPH0412103B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention contains α-L-aspartyl-L-phenylalanine methyl ester (hereinafter referred to as "aspartame"), which is low in calories and has no disadvantages in physical properties that aspartame bulk powder has. The present invention relates to a method for producing improved and easy-to-handle sweetener granules or cubes.

The raw powder of aspartame is generally fine needle-shaped crystals, has a large specific volume, and is easily scattered. Furthermore, both the dispersibility and solubility in water are low. Therefore, when used as a bulk powder, it produces so-called mako when dissolved, exhibiting physical properties that are difficult to dissolve. Therefore, there are various restrictions on the use of raw powders such as sucrose as sweeteners.

In addition, aspartame has a sweetness level about 200 times higher than that of sucrose (varies depending on its concentration or coexisting substances). This means that on a weight basis, the same sweetness as sucrose can be obtained with approximately 1/200 the amount of sucrose used.For example, when using the raw powder as a tabletop sweetener, only a very small amount is required. It becomes something that must be done. Therefore,
Substantially, it is almost impossible to fine-tune the sweetness of coffee, tea, etc. using aspartame powder.

As a method to overcome the various restrictions mentioned above when using aspartame for tabletop use, for example, there is a method of forming tablets with excipients, lubricants, etc. to always obtain a constant usage amount. Proposed.

In addition, attempts to improve solubility and dispersibility include making effervescent tablets by coexisting sodium bicarbonate and a suitable neutralizing agent in the tablets,
Once aspartame is dissolved in water or slurried with an edible bulking agent such as dextrin,
Mainly, heating and drying by spray drying is performed.

Although these methods contribute to the practical application of aspartame, for example, in the case of tablets, it is inconvenient to adjust the sweetness level to suit individual tastes, and they are difficult to dissolve or dissolve together with edible bulk agents. When using methods such as slurrying and then drying, aspartame, which has poor solubility and dispersibility, is dissolved or slurried, making the operation difficult and causing aspartame to foam when dissolved. Furthermore, during the drying process such as spray drying, aspartame decomposes due to heat and becomes a diketopiperazine derivative, which is non-toxic and completely safe but lacks sweetness, resulting in a loss of sweetness. It is expected that such things will happen. In addition, it is necessary to evaporate a relatively large amount of water, and such a method is disadvantageous in terms of energy and has to bear a certain burden in terms of cost.

On the other hand, sucrose, glucose, fructose and other sugars, sugar alcohols such as sorbitol and maltitol, and starch sugars are satisfactory in terms of sweetness, but they do not necessarily have a high degree of sweetness and are therefore high in calories, making them unsuitable for use as dietary sweeteners. Even if they are unsatisfactory or low in calories, maltitol and the like have problems such as low sweetness and difficulty in obtaining a punchy sweet taste.

In view of the problems that aspartame and other sweeteners have, the inventors of the present invention aimed to reduce aspartame's sweetness loss and operational troubles as much as possible, while achieving low calorie sweetness and sweetness quality. As a result of extensive research in order to obtain sweetener granules or cubes that are fully satisfactory, we have combined powdered excipients, especially sugar, sugar alcohol or starch sugar, aspartame and an aqueous aspartame solution or slurry as a binder. This led to the discovery that the above problem could be solved, and the present invention was completed.

That is, the present invention is a method for producing sweetener granules or cubes, which comprises granulating or molding a powdered excipient alone or in combination with aspartame and using an aspartame solution or slurry as a binder. be.

In the present invention, a powdered excipient is used. There are no particular limitations on the types of hydrolysates, salts, etc. Sucrose, lactose, dextrin, sorbitol, maltitol, etc. are preferable in terms of sweetness and flavor.

During granulation or molding, a powdered excipient may be used alone or in combination with powdered aspartame. When using aspartame in combination, the amount of aspartame powder added to the excipient will vary depending on the type of excipient used in combination, the sweetness magnification of the intended sweetener, and the amount of aspartame used as a binder. Generally, the weight ratio of aspartame in the final product is 0.3 to 50% by weight.
Add so that The aspartame solution or slurry used as a binder is not limited in concentration, temperature, etc., as long as aspartame is added to water, alcohol, or other solvent, and all or at least part of the aspartame is dissolved. , available. Further, components such as dextrin, gelatin, gummy substances, flavor substances, etc. may be coexisting in this aspartame solution or slurry.

The amount of the binder added is about 1 to 20% by weight based on the powder raw material, but this amount functions as a binder and exerts the effect of imparting or enhancing the sweetness of aspartame. In contrast, in the case of the method of the present invention, loss of sweetness is expected due to heating aspartame at high temperature or for a long time with a large amount of water required to dissolve a large amount of excipients, whereas in the method of the present invention, loss of sweetness can be significantly reduced. .

For granulation, any method can be used as long as it is a granulation method for powder raw materials, and the method should be selected as appropriate depending on the shape, size, strength, etc. of the desired granules. For example, extrusion granulation , fluidized granulation, stirring granulation or compression granulation methods are preferred.

Extrusion granulation involves adding a binder to raw material powder,
This is a method of extruding through holes of a certain size in a net or die. The amount of binder varies depending on conditions such as the type of powder, but in the case of the present invention, 2 to 10% is optimal.

Fluidized granulation is a granulation method in which powder raw materials are made to flow in a fluidized bed using air, and moisture is added to this to generate an appropriate amount of nuclei and at the same time grow the particles themselves. It is possible to adjust the amount of moisture depending on the diameter. The optimum amount of binder for the present invention is between 5 and 20%.

Agitation granulation is a method of adding a small amount of binder (mainly water) while stirring and mixing powder raw materials, and granulating the mixture by appropriately kneading the mixture.

In the compression granulation method, powder raw materials are left dry or moistened with a small amount of binder, compression molded (tableting methods and roll compressor methods available), and then crushed through a sieve. It is a method of obtaining separated granules,
The binder can be omitted or used in a minimum amount.

The cube may be formed by a conventional method such as compression molding or molding, and the shape is not limited to a cubic shape, but may be a flat domino shape, a spherical shape, or any other desired shape. When molding, the powder raw material may be used as it is, or the powder raw material may be granulated and then molded.

The resulting sweetener granules or cubes are then
Dry as necessary. The drying method is not particularly limited, but it is preferable to use ventilation drying, vacuum drying, fluidized drying, or the like, and to perform the drying at a temperature of 50°C to 110°C.

The sweetener granules or cubes obtained by the method of the present invention have extremely high solubility and dispersibility compared to aspartame bulk powder, are low in calories and have good sweet taste quality, and therefore are highly suitable as so-called tabletop sweeteners. It has many advantages such as less loss of sweetness during the manufacturing process and is advantageous in terms of energy and cost.Furthermore, since aspartame is added after being dissolved, it combines with excipients extremely uniformly, making aspartame a powder. When used in this condition, a product that is more uniform, has no loss due to aspartame scattering, etc., and is free from the risk of classification can be obtained.

The present invention will be further explained below with reference to Examples.

Example 1 Dissolve 25g of aspartame in 80g of 40℃ warm water, suspend and emulsify it to form a slurry, and add lactose to this slurry.
The mixture was added to 975 g and kneaded for about 10 minutes. After the aspartame slurry and lactose were sufficiently mixed, the kneaded product was granulated using a basket-type extrusion granulator with a screen with a hole size of 1 mm in diameter, and then granulated for 10 minutes in a fluidized dryer with a hot air temperature of 80°C. 980 g of dry, smooth granules with uniform particle size were obtained. These granules had a sweetness level five times that of sugar, a specific volume of about 2.0, and a very good solubility in 60°C hot water of 10 to 12 seconds. In addition, there was almost no scattering of aspartame powder during drying.

Example 2 Dextrin powder 4875 was prepared by dissolving 125 g of aspartame in 1 part of 40°C warm water and using it as a binder.
g was fluidized for about 30 minutes at a hot air temperature of 60℃, and 80
Finish drying was performed at ℃ for 10 minutes to obtain smooth granules with a particle size of about 300μ.

This granule product has a sweetness level 5 times that of sugar and a relative volume of approximately 3.
It was very easy to dissolve, taking about 15 seconds to dissolve in hot water at 60°C, and was easy to handle.

Even if the amount of aspartame added was small, it was uniformly dispersed in the product by spraying, and it also had good adhesion with excipients, resulting in less loss of aspartame.

Example 3 4910 g of granulated sugar 90 g of aspartame 4910 g of granulated sugar were charged into a ribbon mixer. 90g aspartame and 250g water as binders
Aspartame slurry was stirred and emulsified using an emulsifier for 30 minutes. While thoroughly mixing the granulated sugar described above with a ribbon mixer, the binder was sprayed with a pressure nozzle. The rotation speed of the ribbon mixer is
The spray rate was 50 ml/min at 70 rpm. After about 10 minutes of mixing, cube molding was performed. The cube molding machine creates a gap of 10m/m x 10m/m x depth of 13m/m.
We used a mold that can be filled, molded, and discharged continuously, consisting of three parts: a 144-piece inner frame, a press die for the middle frame, and a lower plate that receives the press die and the middle frame. After molding with this cube molding machine, it was dried in a tray vacuum dryer at 60°C for 2 hours to obtain aspartame cubes with excellent solubility.

Example 4 Spray-dried coffee powder 3000Kg Aspartame 75Kg Spray-dried coffee powder 3000Kg in a fluidized granulator FL
-40 granulation. As for the manufacturing conditions, the inlet air temperature was 60°C for 15 minutes in the granulation process, and the inlet air temperature was 80°C for 20 minutes in the drying process. As the binder, an aspartame slurry solution prepared by adding 450 g of water to 75 g of aspartame and thoroughly mixing the mixture was used, and the binder was sprayed onto the fluidized powder in the granulation step to granulate it.

The product obtained by this manufacturing method is granulated by granulation, and not only has the physical properties of the powder improved, but it is also greatly improved compared to spray-dried powder, and has a sweet taste. It had particularly excellent properties for coffee.

In addition, the coffee granules produced by this method do not require sweetness, so there is no problem with calories derived from sugar or excipients in low-sweetener formulations, and there is no effect on the taste due to excipients. It has excellent characteristics.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. A powdered excipient alone or in combination with α-L-aspartyl-L-phenylalanine methyl ester, and α-L-aspartyl-L as a binder.
- A method for producing sweetener granules or cubes, which comprises granulating or molding a phenylalanine methyl ester solution or slurry. 2. Claim 1, characterized in that the amount of the powdered excipient or the binder relative to the excipient and α-L-aspartyl-L-phenylalanine methyl ester is 1 to 20% by weight. A method for producing sweetener granules or cubes as described in . 3 The excipient is sugar, dextrin, sugar alcohol,
Claim 1, characterized in that it is one or more selected from polysaccharides, cellulose derivatives, low-calorie polysaccharides, acids, proteins, protein hydrolysates, and salts. Process for producing sweetener granules or cubes.