甜味剂（sweetener）||food and drink

sweetener, Artificial, any synthetically produced, intensely sweet substance developed for use in reduced-calorie or dietetic foods and beverages. Unlike natural sugars, artificial sweeteners do not promote tooth decay, and they contribute few if any calories to the foods they sweeten. Major sweeteners include aspartame, saccharin, the cyclamates, and sucralose.

Aspartame (NutraSweet) consists of two amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Foods containing this substance must be labeled so as to notify individuals with phenylketonuria, a rare disease that requires control of dietary phenylalanine. The sweetener is currently approved for use in a variety of products in the United States, Canada, and 22 other nations.

Saccharin, discovered in 1879, was commonly used in the 1950s and 1960s in combination with cyclamates. It was banned in Canada in 1977 as a result of studies suggesting a link with bladder cancer in animals. In the United States, although saccharin was banned in 1977, Congress has invoked a series of moratoriums that have kept it on the market with warning labels.

The cyclamates, first used in the United States in the early 1950s, were banned in 1969 (in Canada, only for general use) after a study of them in rats implicated them as possible carcinogens. Since the mid-1980s the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been considering a petition to reinstate them.

In 1998 the FDA approved a new sweetener, sucralose. The only artificial sweetener made from sugar, sucralose is 600 times sweeter than sugar itself. Unlike other sweeteners, it passes straight through the gastrointestinal tract—the molecules are not absorbed by the body.

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