How does the presence of stevia glycosides impact surface bubbles stability?

TL;DR

This study investigates how stevia glycosides influence bubble stability in fizzy drinks, revealing that sweeteners enhance bubble longevity due to their surface-active properties, and identifies optimal antifoam concentrations.

Contribution

It introduces a model experiment measuring bubble lifetime with different sweeteners, demonstrating their stabilizing effect and optimizing antifoam use.

Findings

Sweeteners increase bubble stability compared to sucrose.

Surface-active properties of sweeteners cause adsorption at bubble interfaces.

Optimal antifoam concentration can replicate sucrose's bubble stability.

Abstract

The addition of sweeteners in fizzy beverages not only affects the sugar content but also the bubbles stability. In this article, we propose a model experiment, in which the lifetime of hundreds of single bubbles is measured, to assess the stability of bubbles in solutions containing either sucrose or sweeteners. We show that the bubbles are indeed more stable in presence of sweeteners, which are surface active molecules and adsorb at the interface. Additionally, we test an antifoam at different concentrations and show that our experiment allows to identify the best concentration to reproduce the stability obtained in sucrose when we replace this latter by a sweetener.