The objectives of this study were to measure and validate the relative sweetness of various sweeteners and to identify the sweeteners having similar sensory quality to that of sucrose. Twelve types of bulk and intense sweeteners were investigated. The relative sweetness was measured by 2-alternative forced choice method with 5% sucrose solution and the results were validated using descriptive analysis. The relative sweetness of the novel sweeteners such as tagatose, erythritol, stevia, and rebaudioside A 97 were shown to be 0.85, 0.63, 64.1, and 227, respectively. Maltitol and tagatose were shown to elicit very similar sensory characteristics to that of sucrose.

Reasons for (dis)liking CATA proved to be a powerful supporting method to understand the internal drivers of liking which can be overlooked by generic descriptive analysis.