Abstract

Zohreh Rasouli¹ and Behrouz Akbari-Adergani²*

DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.13005/ojc/320342

Aspartame is a widely used artificial sweetener, the long-term safety of which has been controversial ever since it was accepted for human consumption. The main aim of this research is assessment of aspartame exposure due to consumption of some imported chewing gums during summer 2015 to Iran by microwave digestion and HPLC analysis. Thirty chewing gums from highly consumed imported ones were collected from retail market in Tehran. Closed vessel microwave digestion was employed for sample preparation using a three phase temperature program. An aliquot of 20 μL of prepared samples was injected into the HPLC column and the aspartame was detected at 254 nm with an on-line detector. Concentration of aspartame in chewing gum samples was between 1.9 and 30.5 μg/g with an average of 11.1 μg/g. In conclusion, despite of existing aspartame in 76.6 percent of samples, however the effective amount of this artificial sweetener is not as high as the levels that international legislations recommended for exposing due to chewing gum consumption.

Aspartame; Artificial sweeteners; Chewing gum; Microwave digestion

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