If 20 years ago, China's food safety was still in its infancy, leaving some loopholes for people to exploit, then today's China's food safety progress is rapid, not only keeping pace with the world, but also slowly breaking the monopoly of interest groups, pursuing open and transparent decision-making, especially involving controversial revisions, not only cautiously, but also increasing respect for consumer opinions.
On June 24, the National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment issued the "Opinions on Publicly Soliciting Opinions on 9 New Varieties of Food Additives such as Steviol Glycosides (Fermentation Method)", which intends to expand the use of common sweeteners: sodium cyclohexyl sulfamate (also known as cyclamate) and steviol glycosides.
The most familiar thing for ordinary consumers is cyclamate.
In fact, this is not the first time that flavored fermented milk has hoped that cyclamate will be used as a legal additive. As early as the latest version of GB2760-2024 "National Food Safety Standard for the Use of Food Additives" was revised, some relevant parties suggested that the use of cyclamate in flavored fermented milk should be allowed, but it was not accepted. What happened behind this comeback is unknown.
The reason why manufacturers want to add cyclamate to flavored fermented milk or flavored yogurt is simple, because it increases the sweetness of the product, improves the taste, and reduces costs.
In fact, there are many companies that do this, and in 2007, when the addition of cyclamate to flavored yogurt was most rampant, the Ministry of Health at that time investigated and punished four well-known companies at once.
According to the current regulations in mainland China, sodium cyclohexyl sulfamate (also known as cyclamate) as a sweetener is only allowed to be used in frozen drinks, jams, breads, pastries, beverages, jelly and other food categories. And in dairy products, it is strictly forbidden to add cyclamate.
Cyclamate is a commonly used sweetener, and its sweetness is 30~40 times that of sucrose. If you regularly consume beverages or other foods with excessive cyclamate content, it will cause harm to the human liver and nervous system due to excessive intake, especially for the elderly, pregnant women and children with weak metabolic detoxification ability.
The safety standard set by the International Expert Committee on Food Additives is not more than 11 mg per kilogram of body weight per day, which is equivalent to the sweetness produced by 20~30 grams of sucrose for an adult of 60 kg. It has been calculated that if cyclamate alone is used to obtain sufficient sweetness, a bottle of drink will exceed the safe limit.
If cyclamate is used in some occasional snacks, the amount added may be controlled within a safe range, and if it is used in large quantities of food, there is a risk of exceeding.
This is also the reason why it is strictly forbidden to add cyclamate to steamed buns.
Of course, the rules are set by people, as long as it is a person has its limitations, the same starchy food, bread is allowed to use cyclamate, perhaps just in the concept of the formulator, bread is not the staple food of Chinese, is a snack and steamed bread is the staple food.
In the application for the use of cyclamate in flavored yogurt, although the applicant explained that "in the CAC (International Alimentarius Codex) standard, cyclamate can be used in 01.1.2 flavored and/or fermented milk-based beverages with a maximum use of 0.25 g/kg. (CODEX STAN192-1995 2014 edition page 104) flavored fermented milk is similar to it, we are yogurt without water, high concentration, small drinking amount, with reference to the GB2760 standard, the maximum amount of cyclamate used in beverages is 0.65g/kg, this addition is safe".
However, in the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer Carcinogen List (2017 edition), cyclamate is classified in the list of three categories of carcinogens (item 199, included in 1999), that is, "suspected carcinogenicity to humans, and there is no sufficient human or animal data".
Therefore, cyclamate has been completely banned in developed countries such as the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom.
How to balance the potential risks between the interests of manufacturers and consumers is a difficult problem for standard setters.
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