Industry Group Petitions FDA to Amend Labeling Rules for Low- and No-Calorie Sweeteners

The threshold of safety for these sweeteners has been studied extensively, says Kris Sollid, senior director of nutrition communications at the International Food Information Council Foundation, by scientific and regulatory authorities around the world, including the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives, FDA, the European Food Safety Authority, and others. “There is an acceptable daily intake (ADI) amount that has been established for each of these that has a safety factor of more than 100 times. The amount of these sweeteners used in individual products is also very low because they are so much more intense in terms of their sweetness, compared to sugar.”

While consumers with phenylketonuria (PKU), a rare genetic disorder, may have difficulty metabolizing phenylalanine, a component of aspartame, regulatory agencies consider high-intensity sweeteners safe for the general population to consume.

“Adding a parenthetical after every listing of a sweetener on the ingredient list is repetitive and does not provide a public health benefit,” says Robert Rankin, president of the Calorie Control Council, which represents manufacturers and suppliers of low- and reduced-calorie foods and beverages. “Low and no-calorie sweeteners are an effective tool for reducing sugar and calorie content in foods. Requiring that sweeteners be called out on the front of pack calls into question these extensive safety reviews, diverts attention from the sugar reduction and other benefits they provide, and implies there is some underlying concern.”

Meanwhile, there’s a new category of sweeteners such as allulose, a monosaccharide found in raisins and figs that is not metabolized in the same way as sugar. FDA recently issued a statement that it will allow allulose to be excluded from the total and added sugars declarations on the Nutrition Facts and Supplement Facts labels but still be counted as four calories per gram.

Wary Consumers

Today’s consumer is more and more likely to prefer clean-label foods with easy-to-comprehend ingredients. A 2018 market insights survey by Innova found that three out of five consumers say they would rather just reduce sugar consumption instead of increase their consumption of artificial sweeteners. With consumers’ desire for transparency, certain manufacturers have already begun adding sweetener identifiers in their ingredient list voluntarily. “We thought this was a great idea and wanted to see it as the new standard,” says Dr. Gaine.

In addition, in November 2019, the American Academy of Pediatrics published a statement saying that the long-term safety of non-nutritive sweeteners in childhood has not been assessed in humans; the organization recommended that FDA require food labels in the U.S. to list type and quantity of any non-nutritive sweeteners per serving.

And while sugar alcohols are also deemed safe, studies have found they may have some undesirable side effects. For example, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics advises that consuming more than 50 g/day of the sugar alcohol sorbitol or more than 20g/day of mannitol may cause unwanted gastrointestinal effects. “We are consumers and parents ourselves,” says Dr. Gaine. “Suddenly, there are sugar substitutes in so many of the juice and snacks we are feeding our kids.”

Dr. Gaine says that, ultimately, the Sugar Association’s petition is not about safety but about transparency. “We want to emphasize that this is a campaign for presenting accurate information on food labels,” she says. Dr. Gaine believes there’s a lot of consumer support for this issue, citing research that 73 percent of parents think it’s important to know the amount of sugar substitutes in their children’s food, and 66 percent of consumers say it’s important for sugar substitutes to be clearly identified as sweeteners on food labels.

Meanwhile, the petition is garnering support from consumer groups. “As the citizens’ petition points out, consumers may want to follow FDA’s advice and reduce their consumption of added sugars, but don’t realize that they may be unknowingly increasing their ingestion of novel sweeteners, sugar alcohols, and artificial substances,” writes Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League, in a recent letter to the FDA. “By taking the enforcement actions set out in the petition, FDA can ensure that its addition of ‘added sugars’ to the Nutrition Facts label does not have the unintended result of permitting food and beverage manufacturers to deceive well-meaning consumers who are trying to make healthy food purchasing decisions as they shop for their families.”