Type
Fact sheet
Subject
Food Safety, Food safety and suitability research, Food science
Aspartame is a non-nutritive intense sweetener. It is used as an alternative to sugar as a
sweetener, but is added at much lower concentrations as aspartame is approximately 200
times sweeter than sugar. For this reason aspartame is particular used in ‘diet’ and ‘low
calorie’ products. Aspartame is metabolised by gut esterases and peptidases to three
common chemicals; the amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine, and small amounts
of methanol.
Published