Correlation between human panel and electronic tongue responses on the analysis of commercial sweeteners

In this work, the taste characteristics of 11 different formulations of commercial sweeteners in mineral water are evaluated by a group of trained human judges (human panel) and an electronic tongue (ET) system. The ET is comprised by 5 chemical sensors made of nanostructured conducting polymer films deposited onto gold interdigitated microelectrodes, whose electrical capacitances are measured with them immersed in sweetener solutions. It is verified that the ET exhibits sensitivity to the sweeteners in a large range of frequency (0-10(6) Hz), and its response can be reasonably correlated to the human panel evaluation.