Simultaneous determination of nine high-intensity sweeteners in liquid and powder tabletop sweeteners

Abstract

Government regulatory actions and public policies have been recently implemented in Brazil due to the excessive consumption of sugar. Therefore, it becomes relevant to determine the levels of high-intensity sweeteners in tabletop sweeteners consumed by the Brazilian population. Thus, an analytical method was developed and validated for the simultaneous determination of nine sweeteners (acesulfame potassium, aspartame, advantame, sodium cyclamate, neotame, saccharin, sucralose, stevioside, and rebaudioside A) by using ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry in tandem. The sample preparation encompassed only dilution steps. The method was validated taking into account the parameters of linearity, precision, accuracy, and matrix effects. The analytes were determined in two different batches of 21 commercial liquid and powder tabletop sweeteners available on the local market, totaling 42 samples. A minimum of one and a maximum of four sweeteners were found in the analyzed products and sweeteners that were not described on the label were not detected. It is expected that the established method can be used in monitoring programs and that the presented results can contribute to exposure assessments performed nationally.

Keywords:

• Low and no calorie sweeteners
• artificial sweeteners
• diet
• light
• obesity
• diabetes
• LC-MS/MS
• sugar

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) [Grant number 2021/02387-6], Brazilian Federal Agency for Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education (CAPES) [Finance code 001] and National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) [Grant 304176/2022-2].