Encyclopedia of Diets - A Guide to Health and Nutrition

Dietitians of Canada/Les die ́te ́tistes du Canada (DC). 480
University Avenue, Suite 604, Toronto, Ontario, Can-
ada M5G 1V2. Telephone: (416) 596-0857. Website:
http://www.dietitians.ca.
Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). 525 West Van Buren,
Suite 1000, Chicago, IL 60607. Telephone: (312)
782-8424. Website: http://www.ift.org.
National Cancer Institute (NCI). NCI Public Inquiries
Office, 6116 Executive Boulevard, Room 3036A,
Bethesda, MD 20892-8322. Telephone: (800) 4-CAN-
CER. Website: http://www.cancer.gov/.
National Toxicology Program (NTP). Report on Carcino-
gens. P.O. Box 12233, MD EC-14, Research Triangle
Park, NC 27709. Telephone: (919) 541-4096. Website:
http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntpweb/index.cfm?objectid=
7182FF48-BDB7-CEBA-F8980E5DD01A1E2D.
Office of Food Additive Safety, HFS-200, Center for Food
Safety and Applied Nutrition, Food and Drug Admin-
istration, 5100 Paint Branch Parkway, College Park,
MD 20740. Telephone: (301) 436-1200. Website: http://
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/list.html.
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). 1400 Independ-
ence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250. USDA
Food Safety and Inspection Service Meat and Poultry
Hotline: (888) 674-6854. The hotline answers consum-
ers’ questions about food safety and provides resources
for educators.
U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 5600 Fishers
Lane, Rockville, MD 20857-0001. Telephone: (888)
INFO-FDA. Website: http://www.fda.gov/
default.htm.

Rebecca J. Frey, PhD

Artificial sweeteners
Definition
Artificial sweeteners, which are also called sugar
substitutes, alternative sweeteners, or non-sugar
sweeteners, are substances used to replace sugar in
foods and beverages. They can be divided into two
large groups: nutritive sweeteners, which add some
energy value (calories) to food; and nonnutritive
sweeteners, which are also called high-intensity sweet-
eners because they are used in very small quantities as
well as adding no energy value to food. Nutritive
sweeteners include the natural sugars—sucrose (table
sugar; a compound of glucose and fructose), fructose
(found in fruit as well as table sugar), and galactose
(milk sugar)—as well as the polyols, which are a group
of carbohydrate compounds that are not sugars but
provide about half the calories of the natural sugars.
The polyols are sometimes called sugar replacers,

sugar-free sweeteners, sugar alcohols, or novel sugars.

Polyols occur naturally in plants but can also be pro-

duced commercially. They include such compounds as

sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol, and hydrogenated starch

hydrolysates.

Nonnutritive sweeteners are synthetic compounds

that range between 160 and 13,000 times as sweet as

sucrose, which is the standard for the measurement of

sweetness. There are five nonnutritive sweeteners

approved by the Food and Drug Administration

(FDA) for use in the United States as of 2007. They

are saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame potassium (or

acesulfame-K), sucralose, and neotame. There are other

nonnutritive sweeteners that have been approved for

use elsewhere in the world by the Scientific Committee

on Food (SCF) of the European Commission, the

Joint Expert Committee of Food Additions (JECFA)

of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organ-

ization, and the World Health Organization (WHO)

but have not been approved by the FDA. These sub-

stances are alitame, cyclamate, neohesperidine dihy-

drochalcone, stevia, and thaumatin. All of these will

be described in further detail below.

The FDA uses two categories to classify both

nutritive and nonnutritive sweeteners for regulatory

purposes. Some are classified asfood additives, which

is a term that was introduced by the Federal Food,

Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act of 1938. This legis-

lation was passed by Congress in response to a mass

poisoning tragedy that took the lives of over a hundred

people in 1937. A company in Tennessee that manu-

factured an antibacterial drug known as sulfanila-

mide, which had been used safely in powdered or pill

form to treat childhood infections, dissolved the sulfa-

nilamide in diethylene glycol—related to the active

ingredient in automobile antifreeze—in order to mar-

ket it as a liquid medicine. Diethylene glycol is highly

Artificial sweeteners

Times sweeter

Sweetener than sugar Calories Brand name(s)

aspartame 200 4 kcal/g Nutrasweet and Equal

saccharin 200–700 0 Sweet’N Low, Twin,

and Necta Sweet

acesulfame-K 200 0 Sunett and Sweet

(potassium) One

neotame 7,000–13,000 0 Neotame

sucralose 600 0 Splenda

SOURCE: Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Department of

Health and Human Services

(Illustration by GGS Information Services/Thomson Gale.)

Artificial sweeteners