Safety evaluation of certain food additives - ipcs inchem

208 STEVIOL GLYCOSIDES (addendum)
relative sweetness between steviol glycosides and sucrose of 200:1. At that time,
the GEMS/Food international diets that were available were restricted to five
geographical areas: Middle East, Far East, Africa, Europe and Latin America. The
dietary exposures to steviol glycosides estimated using these data ranged from 1.3
to 3.5 mg/kg bw per day.
The current GEMS/Food international diets have been derived for 13 clusters
of nations, based on similar dietary preferences (accessed online, 20 May 2008, at
http://www.who.int/foodsafety/chem/gems/en/index1.html). Using the same assumptions
as those employed by the sixty-third meeting (i.e. that steviol glycosides
would replace all sweeteners used in or as food, at a ratio of 200:1 based on
equivalent sweetness), the present Committee has calculated that international
dietary exposure to steviol glycosides ranges from 0.9 mg/kg bw per day (cluster J)
to 5 mg/kg bw per day (clusters B and M).
The estimates are shown in Table 5. These estimates are conservative, in
that it is very unlikely that users of steviol glycosides would replace all commodity
sweeteners found in their diets.
Table 5. International exposure to steviol glycosides from GEMS/Food cluster
diets
GEMS/Food category Total sugars and honey (g/day) Exposure to steviol glycoside
expressed as steviol (mg/kg bw day)
A 54.0 2
B 164.0 5
C 108.7 4
D 76.5 3
E 120.4 4
F 103.5 3
G 58.6 2
H 101.2 3
I 78.4 3
J 28.2 0.9
K 143.7 4
L 54.0 2
M 150.7 5
3.4 National estimates of dietary exposure
The sixty-third meeting of the Committee evaluated national dietary
exposure estimates submitted by Japan and additionally derived estimates using
production tonnage reported by China and national sugar consumption data from