Aspartame, a popular sugar substitute, will soon be officially declared a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). IARC, a research institute affiliated with WHO, will release this data on July 14, 2023.
IARC will release a monograph explaining the potential dangers of aspartame as a cancer agent. However, the IARC findings do not reflect how high the risk of developing cancer is at a given level of exposure.
The IARC assessment will be complemented by the WHO JECFA. JECFA (Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives) provides risk assessments that determine the type of harm, in this case cancer, that will occur under certain conditions and exposure levels.
News about aspartame being a carcinogen will completely change the F&B industry. How is aspartame used as a sweetener in packaged beverages? How do we analyze sweeteners in beverages?
Aspartame as a Low-Calorie Sweetener
Aspartame was discovered accidentally by a chemist named James Schlatter in 1965. In 1983, the FDA approved its use in soft drinks and legalized it as a food and beverage sweetener in 1996. The FDA allows a daily intake of aspartame of 40mg/kg body weight.
Up until now, aspartame has been known as a low-calorie artificial sweetener. Its sweetness exceeds sugar. White sugar is made from two carbohydrates, glucose and fructose. On the other hand, aspartame is made up of amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine.
Aspartame has been linked to several health problems, such as cardiovascular, Alzheimer’s, stroke, dementia, and weight gain. In addition, the National Cancer Institute reported the results of a study on the relationship between aspartame and cancer in 2022. A total of 103,000 subjects who consumed high amounts of it (1.15x) were found to be more prone to cancer, especially breast cancer.
These risks will certainly have an impact on F&B companies that use aspartame as a sweetener in their products. Aspartame is an important ingredient in diet sodas. In addition, it is also found in milk tea, chewing gum, jelly, and bread.
Many companies are waiting for the IARC evaluation report to be published. The question is, will F&B companies in Indonesia change their ingredients in light of the report?
Investigation of Aspartame Levels in Beverages
The High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) method is highly capable and reliable for the analyzing aspartame in foods and beverages. Many journals support this statement. For example, journals written by Jiasi et al., 2022 and Oktavirina et al., 2021, used HPLC with a Diode Array Detection detector as a method for aspartame analysis.
Liquid samples, such as soda drinks, juices, and wastewater, can be prepared using the SPE technique. SPE is an effective preparation technique applied to analyze compounds in liquid samples.
In the study written by Jiasi, data related to recovery and precision are detailed in Tables 1 and 2. The LODs were 0.52 and 0.48 μg g-1 for aspartame and alitham, respectively, and the LOQs for the same analytes were 1.72 and 1.58 μg g-1.
As a result, almost half of the 100 samples were detected to contain aspartame. It was detected in 11 samples out of 40 liquid dairy products (27.5%), and the concentration ranged from 2.41 to 103.67 μg g-1; 24 samples out of 42 milk-containing beverages (57.1%), and the concentration ranged from 1.81 to 61.49 μg g-1; eight samples out of 18 milk drinks sold (44.4%), and the concentration ranged from 2.14 to 21.11 μg g-1.
