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THIS WEEK, the companies that make and use artificial sweeteners have
been meeting in Brussels to learn how to present their message that sweeteners
are a safe and acceptable alternative to sugar.

The keynote address to the meeting, which is being organised by the
International Sweeteners Association, was given on Tuesday morning by Jimmy
W. Page, director of scientific regulatory affairs for the European division
of the Coca Cola Company. His title: ‘Risk Assessment, Perception and Communication:
Challenge of the ’90s’.

The ISA has chosen as the theme of its meeting what it describes as
the ‘challenge’ of communication. This fact, together with the title of
Page’s address, underscore the extent to which the sweeteners industry is
concerned about its public image.

Representatives of the industry acknowledge that the public is worried
by claims that sweeteners can be dangerous – but also argue that it is confused
by reports appearing in the press and elsewhere. ‘Consumers are not at ease
with what they read,’ says Toni Jacobs, executive director of the ISA.

Some companies are also confused – not over the safety of sweeteners,
but by the complicated regulations surrounding them, she said. The situation
for both consumers and the industry is likely to get even more confused
this month as the European Commission issues a draft directive that will
almost certainly increase the number of sweeteners which are allowed to
be marketed in Britain, West Germany and other member states.

The four approved calorie-free sweeteners in Britain are saccharin,
aspartame (Nutrasweet), acesulfame-K and thaumatin (see box). If the directive
is approved by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, Britain
will have to authorise the use of two additional calorie-free sweeteners,
cyclamates and neohesperidine dihydrochalcone, by the spring of 1992.

Cyclamates – certain salts of cyclamic acid – are permitted in most
European countries but not in the US. Britain and the US banned them in
1969 after studies showed that they appeared to cause tumours in laboratory
animals.

Those studies have now been questioned, according to Paul Turner, the
chair of Britain’s Committee on Toxicity and a clinical pharmacologist from
St Bartholomew’s Hospital. He says the committee has looked at subsequent
studies and believes that the mechanisms that caused the tumours in the
rats do not apply in humans. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration
has said that cyclamates are not carcinogenic, but it has not restored them
to its approved list.

The sweeteners market is currently growing at about 15 per cent a year
in the US and about 10 per cent a year in Britain. The Ministry of Agriculture,
Fisheries and Food recently published a report* on the intake of sweeteners,
which predicted that the consumption of both aspartame and acesulfame-K
in Britain would increase.

It is not only the superior taste of the new sweeteners over saccharin
that has brought about the growth in the market, says the report. There
are new consumers, too: the dieters and the diabetics have been joined by
people who eat and drink ‘diet’ products when they are not trying to lose
weight. In addition to the soft drinks, yoghurts and ‘sugar-bowl’ sweeteners
such as Canderel that have the lion’s share of the market, the sweeteners
industry has expanded into unexpected places – for example coleslaw, potato
salad and instant soups.

Aspartame has generated controversy for years. Its phenylalanine component
‘potentially exerts adverse effects on brain function in humans’, according
to the European Scientific Committee for Food. But the committee says that,
when consumed within the level advised as acceptable, the chemical presents
‘no significant risk’ of a neurotoxic effect.

The committee admits there is controversy over whether very high levels
of phenylalanine affect the brain in a linear or a threshold fashion, and
says that controlled studies ‘are virtually lacking’ in this field. But
there are no data to suggest that moderately raised levels of phenylalanine
are toxic, it says.

Attempts to measure people’s intake of sweeteners have begun only recently.
In addition to the MAFF’s study, conducted in 1987 and 1988 and published
last month, the ISA has done its own study – also in 1988. This found that
61 per cent of the British eat calorie-free sweeteners, compared with only
36 per cent of West Germans.

The studies are difficult to compare because they present their data
differently. But broad comparisons are possible: the ISA survey found, for
example, that 56 per cent of Britons eat saccharin at least once a week,
compared with the MAFF’s figure of 62 per cent. The ISA found that just
over a fifth of the population consumes aspartame at least once a week,
while the MAFF figure was nearly a third.

But as the market for sweeteners has expanded, the sugar industry has
not suffered, according to Pierre Wursch from the Nestle Research Centre
in Lausanne, Switzerland. In Britain, for example, the average daily intake
of kilocalories from sugar and chocolate confectionary has risen from 139
per person in 1986 to 150 in 1988, according to the MAFF.

The market will widen much further with the advent of new sweeteners.
Unlike the current generation, these will withstand high temperatures without
breaking down and losing their sweetness. The new generation will enable
the food industry to produce more and more artificially sweetened baked
goods – cakes, biscuits and breakfast cereals, for example.

Two such products which have not yet been approved but which could soon
be are Pfizer’s alitame – another dipeptide like aspartame – and sucralose,
an altered sucrose molecule developed by Tate & Lyle and Johnson &
Johnson. Sucralose is a sucrose molecule with three of its hydroxyl groups
substituted by chlorine atoms. It tastes about 600 times as sweet as sugar.
The Nutrasweet Company, meanwhile, is working on two classes of molecules
that could be even sweeter (see Technology, 31 March 1990).

‘The individual food manufacturers are all secretly making sugar-free
confecL tionery and will go on the market in due course,’ claims Andrew
Rugg-Gunn, a dental health researcher at the University of NewL castle-upon-Tyne.
Evidence that the industrial bakers, such as United Biscuits, are planning
to use these sweeteners is difficult to obtain; however, the committees
that assess new ‘canL didate’ sweeteners for safety and toxicity have to
be satisfied that there is a case for the market’s ‘need’ for them before
they start to consider the evidence. That case, which includes an explanation
from the companies that want to use an additive of why it is necessary,
has been met.

The Community directive will supersede all national regulations. The
limits that it proposes on permitted sweeteners in foods are based on safety
calculations by the European Commission’s Scientific Committee for Food.
They will be legally binding.

For example, manufacturers would be allowed to put up to 800 milligrams
of aspartame into a kilogram of ice cream and 600 milligrams into a litre
of soft drinks. This is roughly consistent with the levels of aspartame
that manufacturers currently add: one 330-ml can of soft drink sweetened
with aspartame alone contains about 200 milligrams of the chemical.

The draft directive sets no limits for the levels of combinations of
sweeteners – for example, saccharin and aspartame together.

Industry itself would like to see fewer regulations. ‘We can’t avoid
the fact that they (sweeteners) are classed as additives and regulated heavily,’
says Lesley Yeomans of Tate & Lyle’s sweeteners division, who is also
vice chair of the association’s PR committee. ‘But the ISA’s position is
that this is unnecessary.’ Officials in Brussels disagree: ‘These sweeteners
are necessary, but we have to be careful,’ says one.

The Scientific Committee for Food is not the only one to evaluate data.
Most countries have their own regulatory bodies. The role of these committees
will be weaker once the directive takes effect in 1992.

In Britain, the Committee on Toxicity, which is reviewing the evidence
on safety for each sweetener, advises the government through the Food Advisory
Committee. Turner says the effects of the changes from Brussels should not
be oversimplified.

‘If we felt strongly about a directive, the government would be able
to take specific action,’ he says. ‘The idea that the directive is going
to direct Britain to take any sweeteners that have not been approved is
nonsense. We have our representatives on the European Scientific Committee
for Food.’

The confusion among companies is understandable. In addition to the
European committee and the national ones, there is the influential and respected
Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), administered by the Food
and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization. Despite
the flow of information and members between all these committees, their
conclusions on specific sweeteners can – and do – differ.

A prime example of this difference concerns saccharin. Last month, Britain
doubled its ‘acceptable daily intake’ (ADI) on saccharin from 2.5 milligrams
per kilogram of body weight to 5 milligrams. (The ADI, which is only an
advisory measure, is defined by the WHO as ‘the daily intake of a chemical
which, during an entire lifetime, appears to be without appreciable risk
on the basis of all the known facts at the time’.) The new level is double
that agreed by JECFA and the European Scientific Committee for Food.

In the same breath, the food minister David Maclean warned diabetics
to vary their intake of sweeteners. The MAFF’s survey had shown that a few
diabetics were exceeding the ADI for saccharin.

The original ADI for saccharin was set in 1982. To calculate an ADI,
first take the maximum daily amount of a substance that animals can be shown
to eat without any physiological effects, over their lifetime. For example,
for saccharin the level established was 500 milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight
a day. Next, divide this by 100, an arbitrary ‘safety factor’, which is
meant to allow for variation in people’s diets.

Britain, Europe and the JECFA, however, all doubled the safety factor
to 200 because they were concerned about studies indicating that saccharin
caused bladder tumours in male rats. They asked for more information, and
set a temporary ADI at 2.5 milligrams per kilogram.

Ron Walker from the University of Surrey, who sits on both the COT and
the JECFA, says that more recent studies are ‘reassuring’. The COT says
it has reviewed epidemiological studies since 1984 and found no increased
risk of bladder tumours in men who eat large amounts of saccharin. It adds
there are ‘strong indications that the saccharin anion is not the only critical
factor involved’ in the male rats’ tumours. As a result, the committee says,
it is satisfied that the safety factor of 100 is sufficient.

But the chair of Europe’s Scientific Committee for Food, Cornelius van
der Heijden from the National Institute of Public Health and Environmental
Protection in the Netherlands, sees no reason to change the temporary ADI
of 2.5 milligrams. There are no plans to do so, he says.

* * *

The calorie-free sweeteners permitted now in Britain

Saccharin

Discovered in 1879, this molecule (formula C7H5NO₃S) is about
300 times as sweet as sucrose. It has a bitter aftertaste.

Aspartame

The molecule is two amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine, linked
by a methyl group. It is about 200 times as sweet as sugar and has no aftertaste.
It breaks down slowly at room temperature, and rapidly at higher temperatures,
making it unsuitable for baked foods. People with the inherited disease
phenylketonuria cannot tolerate phenylalanine

Acesulfame-K

The molecule contains sulphur and nitrogen, is up to 300 times as sweet
as sugar and is rapidly gaining a foothold on the market in soft drinks,
desserts and puddings.

Thaumatin

Derived from the plant Thaumatococcus daniellii, this is a large peptide
polymer whose taste builds up slowly. Less than 1 per cent of the British
population currently consumes it. It can be used to sweeten a variety of
products, such as chewing gum, jam and soya sauces.

Sweeteners that will probably be permitted in 1992:

Cyclamates

These are the calcium and sodium salts of cyclamic acid. They are only
30 times as sweet as sugar, but are widely used in foods, drinks and pharmaceuticals.
Britain banned them in 1969.

Neohesperidine DC

A substance derived from oranges, now used for speciality beers in Belgium.
No other country currently permits it to be used as an additive.

*Intakes of Intense and Bulk Sweeteners in the UK, 1987-1988, HMSO,
1990