Study of Preservatives and Stimulants in Commercial Soft Drinks

Abstract

Commercially available soft drinks i.e., Sprite and 7up (lemon) samples of 10 different batches were studied by UV-Vis spectrophotometry to find out the presence of preservative and stimulant. The wavelength of absorption maxima (max) was 224 nm for sodium benzoate and 272 nm for caffeine. The soft drink samples were degassed, extracted with HPLC grade water and cleaned up to study sodium benzoate and caffeine content. The average quantity of caffeine was in the range of 22 to 30 μg/ml in Sprite and 20 to 30 μg/ml in 7up (lemon), whereas the average quantity of sodium benzoate was in the range of 181 to 191 μg/ml in Sprite and 140 to 160 μg/ml in 7up (lemon) samples. The correlation coefficients of the calibration curves of sodium benzoate and caffeine were found to be 0.9972 and 0.9862, respectively. Recovery experiment was done by spiking sodium benzoate at 20 μg/ml level with 10 replicate studies. The mean recovery of sodium benzoate was 89.14 ± 2.14 %. The reproducibility and repeatability of the method was very satisfactory with low value of RSD. The present method can be successfully applied for the study of sodium benzoate and caffeine in commercial soft drinks.

Analysis and Health Risk Assessment of Sodium Benzoate and Potassium Sorbate in Selected Fruit Juice and Soft Drink Brands in Nigeria

“…These values are lower than what was obtained in our current study. Levels of Sodium benzoate (151.76 -190.04 ppm) higher than the current study have been recorded in a study carried out on Bangladesh soft drinks [22]. Similar studies in India [23] and Srilanka [24] also recorded much higher levels of benzoate than this study; the reported values were 172.35 -396.44 and 33 -631ppm respectively.…”

Studies of Preservative and Coloring Agent in Jam and Jelly

“…All jelly samples were found to contain sodium benzoate in a range of 160 -289 mg/kg, (approximately 0.16% to 0.28%). The allowable limit of sodium benzoate is 0.1% in jelly 7,8 . Out of 15 jelly samples 10 samples contained yellow 6 in the range of 0.011% to 0.014%.…”

HPLC analysis of artificial preservatives, stimulants and sweeteners in carbonated beverages in Bangladesh

“…The use of sodium benzoate as bacteriostatic and fungistatic in soft drinks under acidic condition is very common practice to the beverage companies. However, daily consumption may impact to adverse side effects, such as skin rash, non-immunological contact urticarial, hyperpnoea, metabolic acidosis, and asthma (Sultana et al, 2016). Naturally produced caffeine, a methylxanthine alkaloid found over 63 plant species globally, which is most frequently used worldwide as psychoactive substance (Kapil et al, 2011) in most of the energy drinks due to its stimulating action on central nervous systems (Bispo et al, 2002;Gerald et al, 2014;Pennay et al, 2011;Wanyika et al, 2010).…”