EU legislation on food additives is governed by
Council Directive 89/107/EEC (consolidated version), which is based on the
principle that only authorised additives may be used in the manufacture of
foodstuffs. Sweeteners form an important class of food additives, which are
regulated by
Directive 94/35/EC (consolidated version) and its amendments.
At present, eight high intensity (non-nutritive) sweeteners are authorised by
EU legislation, i.e., acesulfame-K, aspartame, aspartame-acesulfame salt,
cyclamate, neohesperidine dihydrochalcone, saccharin, sucralose, and
thaumatin. They may be added up to defined limits (maximum usable dose) to
specified groups of foodstuffs. Due to controversy about their health effects
and to ensure proper implementation of existing legislation, EU Member States
are required to establish a system of regular surveys to monitor sweetener
consumption. To obtain this information reliable quantitative methods of
analysis are required. Today, intense sweeteners are not often used alone but
more commonly in combination with others. Therefore reliable methods that can
be used for the analysis of several sweeteners simultaneously are needed.
The IRMM has developed and validated in-house a high performance liquid
chromatographic method with evaporative light scattering detection. This
method is capable of simultaneous identification and quantification of six
authorised sweeteners, and of three non-authorised sweeteners in beverages,
canned or bottled fruits and yoghurts. Full method validation was carried out
by performing a collaborative trial:
Buchgraber, M. and Wasik, A., Validation of an analytical method for the
simultaneous determination of nine intense sweeteners by HPLC-ELSD - Report on
the final collaborative trial. Report
EUR 22726 EN[1756Kb], Belgium 2007
To facilitate deployment of the method for the analytical chemist a simple
toolbox has been established, containing:
The method offers an important measure to assess compliance with labelling
provisions and is suitable for the cost effective analysis of large numbers of
samples.
A simple method of analysis for sucralose, based on the application of
thin-layer chromatography without any further sample clean-up, has also been
developed and is currently being validated in a collaborative trial.
Read more
Buchgraber, M., and Wasik, A., Determination of nine intense sweeteners in
foodstuffs by high performance liquid chromatography and evaporative light
scattering detection: Interlaboratory Study, Journal of AOAC International 92
(2009) 208-222
Wasik, A., McCourt., J., and Buchgraber, M., Simultaneous determination of
nine intense sweeteners in foodstuffs by high performance liquid
chromatography and evaporative light scattering detection - development and
single laboratory validation, Journal of Chromatography A 1157 (2007)
187-196
McCourt, J., Stroka, J. and Anklam, E., Experimental design based development
and single laboratory validation of a capillary zone electrophoresis method
for the determination of the artificial sweetener sucralose in food matrices,
Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry 382 (2005) 1269-1278
Stroka, J., Dossi, N., and Anklam, E., Determination of the artificial
sweetener sucralose by capillary electrophoresis, Food Additives and
Contaminants 20 (2003) 524–527
Spangenberg, B., Stroka, J., Arranz, I. and Anklam, E., A simple and reliable
HPTLC method for the quantification of the intense sweetener sucralose,
Journal of Liquid Chromatography & Related Technologies 26 (2003)
2729-2739