Question
Which artificial sweeteners are banned in the US?
A short list, two thirds of it older than the modern sweetener aisle, and none of it in the direction people expect.
Part of Blood sugar · Banned elsewhere
The question usually arrives from the other direction. People want to know what Europe has banned that America allows. This is the answer to the reverse, and the list is short and old.
The three
Cyclamate. The regulation describes cyclamates as “synthetic chemicals having a sweet taste 30 to 40 times that of sucrose”, and prohibits them on the basis of an order of 21 October 1969.
Dulcin. Described as “a synthetic chemical having a sweet taste about 250 times that of sucrose”, prohibited by an order of 19 January 1950.
P-4000. Described as “a synthetic chemical having a sweet taste about 4000 times that of sucrose”, prohibited by the same order on the same day.
Two of the three were dealt with before the modern sweetener aisle existed, which is why almost nobody has heard of them.
The prohibitions are absolute
Each of the three uses the same construction: food containing “any added or detectable level” of the substance is adulterated.
Dulcin and P-4000 are also described identically in one respect that is easy to miss: both are “not found in natural products at levels detectable by the official methodology”. So a detection is evidence of addition, which is what makes a zero rule enforceable at all.
What the list does and does not mean
The regulation is unusually candid about its own basis. Substances are listed “because of a determination that they present a potential risk to the public health or have not been shown by adequate scientific data to be safe for use in human food”.
Those are two different findings sharing one list, and no entry says which of the two applies to it. A prohibition can record evidence of harm, or an absence of evidence of safety at the point a decision was needed.
It is also explicitly incomplete. The regulation warns that it “includes only a partial list of substances prohibited from use in human food, for easy reference purposes, and is not a complete list”.
And it is not permanent
There is a route back, and it is written into the same section. Anyone may petition to “establish, amend, or repeal a regulation under this section on the basis of new scientific evaluation or information”, if the petition carries “an adequate scientific basis”.
None of the three has been. That is a fact about what has been submitted and decided, not a re-endorsement of the original science.
What you will actually meet
Saccharin, Aspartame, sucralose, acesulfame potassium, steviol glycosides and the sugar alcohols, all permitted and all covered on this site. Cyclamate is the one you may meet on an imported pack, where it appears as E952.
The blood sugar cluster covers what these do to a label’s numbers, which is a more useful question than which of them a regulator once refused.
Sources
- 21 CFR 189.135: Cyclamate and its derivatives US Food and Drug Administration, via eCFR · ecfr.gov Prohibits cyclamate, gives its sweetness as 30 to 40 times sucrose, and cites the order of 21 October 1969.
- 21 CFR 189.145: Dulcin US Food and Drug Administration, via eCFR · ecfr.gov Prohibits dulcin, gives its sweetness as about 250 times sucrose, and cites the order of 19 January 1950.
- 21 CFR 189.175: P-4000 US Food and Drug Administration, via eCFR · ecfr.gov Prohibits P-4000, gives its sweetness as about 4,000 times sucrose, and cites the same 1950 order as dulcin.
- 21 CFR 189.1: Substances prohibited from use in human food US Food and Drug Administration, via eCFR · ecfr.gov States the two grounds for prohibition, warns that the list is partial, and provides the petition route for amending or repealing an entry.