Determination of Sugar Content in Flavored Waters

Abstract

Flavored waters mostly consists of water, natural or artificial flavorings, and sugar or artificial sweeteners. This work aimed to assess total sugar content in 25 different flavored water samples commercially available from the Slovenian local market by using an high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with refraction index detection (RID). HPLC (Agilent 1200 Series) was performed with an isocratic elution of mobile phase 15 mM K2HPO4 water solution. Degassed and diluted samples were analyzed on Supelcogel K column (300 x 7.8 mm, with 9 μm particles size), at 80 °C and 0.5 mLmin-1 flow rate. The total sugar content in flavored waters varies according to the types and brands, from 11.0 g/L to 44.1 g/L. Concentration values of sucrose, glucose and fructose were found to be in the ranges (g/L): 10.0 – 32.8; 1.3 - 21.7 and 3.0 -37.2, respectively. The results suggest caution in the use of high amount of flavored waters especially by diabetic patients.