Common Sugar Free Sweeteners

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We see sugar free products everywhere these days. But they are all different in how they replace sugar and the ingredient/s that provide the sweet taste. For more information on these sweeteners, below is a link to Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). 

 

https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/additives/pages/sweeteners.aspx

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Most sugar free sweeteners are sometimes labelled with a sweetener code, as seen below. For example you may see "sweeteners (950,951)" on some products. This means the product contains acesulfame potassium and aspartame.

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FSANZ is the statutory authority in the Australian Government Health portfolio which is responsible for developing food standards for Australia and New Zealand. 

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The FDA also provides a lot of information on their investigation of artificial sweeteners on their website. This includes history of approvals, how they reached a conclusion on the safety of artificial sweeteners  and precautionary steps taken in the past.

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https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/additional-information-about-high-intensity-sweeteners-permitted-use-food-united-states

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These authorities set acceptable daily intake (ADI) which provides a maximum estimate that can be consumed every single day over an entire lifetime, without any appreciable health risks. The ADI is usually based on studies which involve significantly high dosages of sweeteners to animals, much higher than any human would consume through sweetened food products.

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All except one approved high intensity sweeteners is a nutritive sweetener, the one being Aspartame. A nutritive sweetener is one that adds caloric value to the food it is added to. In contrast a non-nutritive sweeteners are very low in calories or contain no calories at all.

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