Sweeteners shall be indicated on the food label

According to global times life weekly, sweeteners are more widely used in daily life than we think Beverages, pickles, pastries, biscuits, bread, ice-cream, preserves, sweets, seasonings, canned meat, etc., almost all common foods, have been added with sweeteners There are two kinds of sweeteners that are allowed to be used in China: nutritive and non nutritive Nutritive type mainly refers to maltitol, sucrose, glucose syrup, etc., which not only have sweet taste, but also produce heat; non nutritive type mainly refers to the sweetener with little or no heat, which is added in sugar free food Among these sweeteners, xylitol, aspartame and saccharin sodium are commonly used Among them, xylitol is mostly used in chewing gum and sugar reducing food; aspartame is widely used in beverages, cold drinks, and a considerable number of dairy products, drugs, health food, pickles and other food; saccharin sodium is more commonly used than the former two, basically used to replace sucrose, used in all food, especially preserves and preserved fruits In addition to these three kinds of sweeteners, such as cyclamate, stevioside and sucralose are also common sweeteners, as well as acesulfame, which is commonly used in the foods of diabetic patients The side effects of sweeteners should indicate that most sweeteners in the daily diet are allowed to be added by the state, and the amount of sweeteners is limited to a certain range Some sweeteners are relatively safe, such as sorbitol, which has less calories than glucose and has few side effects However, more sweeteners have certain side effects or are not suitable for some people to eat, so the manufacturer should indicate in the commodity label For example, stevioside, which has low calories, can reduce blood pressure, promote metabolism and other functions, but the research found that it may have a certain carcinogenic effect, so it has been banned from selling foods containing stevioside in Hong Kong and other places Although the nutritional value of xylitol and maltitol is higher than that of sweeteners, too much of them may cause diarrhea and even gastrointestinal dysfunction Sweeteners often contain cyclohexylamine and dicyclohexylamine, which can cause cancer Therefore, we should be careful when choosing them as sweeteners The main metabolite of aspartame is phenylalanine, which is harmless to normal people, but can affect the development of phenylketonuria patients Therefore, the package of food containing aspartame should indicate that it is not suitable for phenylketonuria patients In addition, aspartame has intake restrictions: the FAO and who joint food additive expert committee stipulate that aspartame is allowed to take 40 mg / kg body weight per day, and pregnant women and nursing mothers are better not to eat aspartame However, the domestic food packaging is generally not marked with the added amount, which is often beyond the control of consumers Saccharin sodium is an artificial sweetener, which is extracted from coal tar Although its use is very common, especially in the preserved fruits that women like to eat, most of them are added with saccharin sodium, but the possibility of cancer has not been completely ruled out, so we should avoid long-term large consumption At present, the maximum use of saccharin sodium is 0.15g/kg, which is not allowed in infant food In the United States, all foods added saccharin sodium as sweetener are required to be marked with the warning that saccharin sodium can cause animal tumors The abuse of sweeteners makes people worry that, generally speaking, the amount of sweeteners consumed by each person in a day is very small, which will not affect health, but only if the manufacturer must add the sweeteners according to the specified amount in the food In particular, saccharin sodium with low cost can not be used in large quantities because it is cheap At present, there is a certain trend of abuse of sweeteners in the market, mainly in the following two aspects: one is to use a variety of sweeteners in a food mixture, so as to achieve the purpose of not only making the use of a sweetener exceed the standard, but also increasing the sweetness In particular, some "plum" products often add more than two sweeteners Second, the sweetener is packaged in a new way, such as "proteoglycan", which has nothing to do with protein, but a mixture of saccharin sodium and aspartame Since most of the sweeteners are snacks, consumers must be careful not to overeat the same snack When purchasing, you should carefully read the food label to see which sweetener it adds and whether it is suitable for your own consumption From the perspective of health and physical development, children, pregnant women and other special consumers should not eat foods containing artificial sweeteners.