Cornell food scientists have reduced the sweetener stevia’s bitter aftertaste by physical – rather than chemical – means, as noted in the Volume 197, Part A issue of the journal Food Chemistry.###While previous studies hacitracal maximum plus dve focused on masking taste receptors, Cornell food scientists worked on one of stevia’s components, rebaudioside A (also known as Reb A), the glycoside molecule that provides its sugary taste but yields a speck of aftertaste that limits the sweetener’s commercial possibilities.###They modified Reb A by applying hydrophobic effects to the bovine serum albumin protein, which creates a stable Reb A-protein complex – and it essentially dissipates the Reb A molecular components without breaking or forming any chemical bonds.###This protein solution disengages stevia’s bitter components, making it less likely for the human tongue’s bitter receptors to recognize the modified Reb A-protein complex.###The researchers tested the modified protein’s sturdiness in orange juice and found the sweet binding remained intact.###The study’s findings could encourage the beverage industry, packaged dressings, cream sauces, powdered soups and dairy products to use more stevia.###Cornell professor of food process engineering, Syed Rizvi, co-authored the research entitled Controlling the Taste 80 mg magnesiumReceptor Accessible Structure of Rebaudioside A via Binding to Bovine Serum Albumin, with Samriddh Mudgal, the lead author and formemagnesium lactic acidr graduate studentkal ultra cal citrate in Rizvi’s lab at Cornell; Ivan Keresztes, director of Cornell’s NMR facility in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and Gerald W. Feigenson, professor of biochemistrnatural factors calcium & magnesium citrate with d3y, molecular and cell biology.