Producing tastands including food and beverage additives

Abstract

Described is a process for producing one or more tastands including food and beverage additives from Saccharum officinarum leaves (sugarcane leaves) by means of carrying out one or more physical separation unit operations on a plurality of such leaves, macerates thereof or mixtures of leaves and macerates thereof whereby one or more natural food additives is separated and isolated from the remainder of the plurality of leaves, macerates thereof or mixtures of leaves and macerates thereof. Such unit operations include pressurization using hydraulic press means, steam distillation, fractional distillation, supercritical carbon dioxide extraction, volatile solvent extraction and/or charcoal column separation means. Also described is apparatus for carrying out such processes as well as the products produced using such processes and organoleptic uses of such products. Also described are compositions comprising (a) such tastands in admixture with (b) an eatable having a bitter and/or metallic taste. The eatable is any ingested material taken by mammals, such as foodstuffs, non-calorie food components or medicines including bitter chocolate or a drug such as ibuprofen.