Title: Alternative Sweeteners

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Alternative Sweeteners:
An Overview
Lyn O’Brien Nabors
Calorie Control Council, Atlanta, Georgia
The use of low-calorie sugar-free products tripled in the final two decades of the
20th century. In the United States alone, more than 150 million people use these
products regularly. Even though hundreds of good-tasting low-calorie, sugar-free
products are now available, most light product consumers say they would like
to have additional low-calorie sugar-free products available. Of particular interest
are baked goods and desserts (1).
A number of events that occurred in the late 1990s are expected to facilitate
providing additional good-tasting, low-calorie, sugar-free products. The approval
of acesulfame potassium for soft drinks and aspartame and sucralose as general
purpose sweeteners in the United States and recognition by regulatory agencies
around the world that polyols have reduced caloric values compared with sucrose
are examples. (A general purpose sweetener may be used in accordance with
good manufacturing practices to sweeten any food when a standard of identity
does not preclude its use.) These events should expand the use of sweeteners
alone and in combination as well.
On the scientific front, after more than 100 years of use, scientists around
the world are publicly acknowledging that saccharin is safe for humans. For example,
in 1997, a special International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
panel determined the bladder tumors in male rats resulting from the ingestion of
high doses of sodium saccharin are not relevant to man. And, in late 1998, IARC
downgraded saccharin from a Category 2B substance, possible carcinogenic to
humans, to Category 3, not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans. Agents
for which the evidence of carcinogenicity is inadequate in humans but sufficient
in experimental animals may be placed in Group 3 when strong evidence exists
that the mechanism of carcinogenicity in experimental animals does not operate
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