Sugar Substitutes & Sweeteners - Thaumatin

The thaumatins were first found as a mixture of proteins isolated from the katemfe fruit (Thaumatococcus daniellii Bennett) of west Africa. Some of the proteins in the thaumatin family (Simple Modular Architecture Research Tool accession #SM00205) are natural sweeteners roughly 2000 times more potent than sugar. Although very sweet, thaumatin's taste is markedly different from sugar's. The sweetness of thaumatin builds very slowly, and upon fading leaves a lingering aftertaste that some find unpleasant. Some people report licorice-like elements in its flavor.

Thaumatin is highly water-soluble, and stable to heating under acidic conditions. Thaumatin production is induced in katemfe in response to an attack upon the plant by viroid pathogens. Several members of the thaumatin protein family display significant in vitro inhibition of hyphal growth and sporulation by various fungi. The thaumatin protein is considered a prototype for a pathogen-response protein domain. This thaumatin domain has been found in species as diverse as rice and Caenorhabditis elegans.

Within west Africa, the katemfe fruit has been locally cultivated and used to flavor foods and beverages for some time. The fruit's seeds are encased in a membranous sac, or aril, that is the source of thaumatin. In the 1970s, the Talin Food Company of Merseyside, in the United Kingdom, began extracting thaumatin from the fruit and selling it under the trade name Talin. In 1990, researchers at Unilever reported the isolation and sequencing of the two principal proteins found in thaumatin, which they dubbed thaumatin I and thaumatin II. These researchers were also able express thaumatin in genetically engineered bacteria.

Thaumatin has been approved as a sweetener in the European Union (E957), Israel, and Japan. In the United States, it is a Generally Recognized as Safe flavoring agent, but as of 2005 it is not approved as a sweetener.

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