Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
that no further safety reviews of aspartame were needed and that the acceptable daily intake (ADI)
of 40 mg/kg body weight should remain.
A new review, published in the
Annals of Oncology
, looked at the safety of a number of com-
mon sweeteners, particularly saccharin and aspartame. Italian case-control studies conducted over a
13-year period were brought together and checked for associations between sweetener consumption
and the risk of developing cancer. Patients with various types of cancers formed the “test group,”
including those with colon, rectal, oral, and breast cancers. The “control group” comprised 7000
patients admitted to hospital for reasons other than cancer.
Dietary assessments were used to compare the intake of sweeteners in each group. No signii-
cant differences were found. When individual cancers were considered, it was found that women
with breast or ovarian cancer tended to consume fewer sweeteners than controls. In the case of
laryngeal cancer, a direct relationship was found between risk and total sweetener intake, although
the sample size was relatively small.
The authors concluded that consumption of saccharin, aspartame, and other sweeteners did
not appear to increase the risk of cancer. Average sweetener intake in Italy is lower than in other
European countries, and little data were available for individual sweeteners, or the use of “Diet”
drinks. Despite these shortcomings, the study nevertheless makes an important contribution to
the debate. For more information, see Gallus et al. (2007) and
http://www.euic.org/page/el/show/
Historically, honey and maple syrup have been used to replace sugar.
Pure cornstarch is by far the biggest source of other carbohydrate sweeteners used by today's
food manufacturers. Cornstarch is split into a variety of smaller fragments (called dextrins) with
acid or enzymes. The smaller fragments are then converted into various cornstarch sweeteners used
by today's food manufacturers.
Hydrolysis
is the term used to describe the overall process where starch is converted into various
sweeteners. Sweetener products made by cornstarch hydrolysis include dextrose, corn syrup, corn
syrup solids, maltodextrin, high fructose corn syrup, and crystalline fructose.
A juice concentrate is the syrup produced after water, iber, and nutrients are removed from the
original fruit juice (see
http://www.sugar.org/other-sweeteners/other-caloric-sweeteners.html
)
.
1.11 SaFetY OF LOW-CaLOrIe SWeeteNerS
All low-calorie sweeteners are subject to comprehensive safety evaluation by regulatory
authorities; any unresolved issues at the time of application have to be investigated before they
are approved for use in the human diet. Deinitive independent information on the safety of sweet-
eners can be obtained from the Websites of the EFSA (
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/EFSA/efsa_
locale-1178620753812_home.htm
), the European Scientiic Committee on Food (
http://ec.europa
.eu/food/fs/sc/scf/reports_en.html
)
, and Joint WHO/FAO Expert Committee on Food Additives
The safety testing of food additives involves
in vitro
investigations, to detect possible actions on
DNA, and
in vivo
studies in animals, to determine what effects the compound is capable of produc-
ing when administered at high doses, or high dietary concentrations, every day.
The daily dose levels are increased until either some adverse effect is produced or 5% of the
animal's diet has been replaced by the compound. The dose levels are usually very high because
a primary purpose of animal studies is to ind out what effects the compound can produce on the
body irrespective of the dose level (hazard identiication). The dose-response data are analyzed to
determine the most sensitive effect (the so-called critical effect). The highest level of intake that
does not produce the critical effect, that is, the no-observed adverse effect level (NOAEL), is used
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