This study (purchase required) reports a direct method to verify the purity and authenticity of commercial sweetener raw materials; erythritol, xylitol, and stevia. Analysis is by near- and mid-infrared spectroscopy combined with a DD-SIMCA classification model. The model was enhanced with virtual samples created by adding PCA residuals and noise. The authors report that this improved the model's robustness and accuracy. Validation was performed using independent sample sets, including commercial natural sweeteners and in-house samples adulterated with saccharin, sucrose, acesulfame, and silicon dioxide.
The authors conclude that the approach was efficient for xylitol and erythritol authentication. Efficiency rates were 90 % or higher for xylitol, erythritol, and stevia, but stevia sampling is challenging due to stevia's variable composition and needs improvement before the model could be applied with confidence.
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