Nutrition Innovation Centre for Food and Health, Biomedical Sciences Research Institute, Ulster University,Coleraine BT52 1SA, Northern Ireland,UK.
Proc Nutr Soc. 2019 Aug;78(3):463-472. doi: 10.1017/S0029665119000594. Epub 2019 Apr 26.
The term 'sweeteners' encompasses both nutritive and non-nutritive sweeteners, which when added to food/beverages, can enhance the flavour and other functional properties of food/beverage products. This review considers how dietary biomarker approaches may enhance current understanding of nutritive sweetener (namely free sugars) and non-nutritive or low-energy sweetener (LES) intakes and how these may impact health. Recent public health strategies to reduce free sugar consumption will help contribute to challenging sugar intake targets. Robust evaluation is needed to determine the effectiveness of these approaches to reducing free sugar consumption. LES provides a sweet taste without the addition of appreciable energy and can help maintain the palatability of reformulated products. All LES undergo rigorous safety evaluations prior to approval for use. Whilst intervention data suggest LES can be beneficial for health (relating to weight status and glycaemic control), debate persists on their use and findings from population-based research are mixed, in part because of potential contributing factors such as reverse causality. Additionally, assessments often consider only certain sources of LES (e.g. LES-beverages) and/or LES as a homogeneous group despite differing biological fates, thus not adequately capturing intakes of individual LES or allowing for reliable estimation of overall intakes. Urinary biomarker approaches developed/investigated for sweetener consumption have the potential to overcome existing limitations of dietary data by providing more objective intake data, thereby enhancing population-based research. In conclusion, such biomarker approaches to the concomitant study of free sugars and LES intakes are timely and represent interesting developments in an area of significant public health interest.
“甜味剂”一词涵盖了营养性和非营养性甜味剂，当添加到食品/饮料中时，可以增强食品/饮料产品的风味和其他功能特性。本综述考虑了饮食生物标志物方法如何增强对营养性甜味剂（即游离糖）和非营养性或低能量甜味剂（LES）摄入量的现有理解，以及这些方法如何影响健康。最近减少游离糖摄入量的公共卫生策略将有助于实现挑战糖摄入量目标。需要进行稳健的评估，以确定这些减少游离糖消耗的方法的有效性。LES 提供了甜味，而不会增加可观的能量，可以帮助维持配方产品的可接受性。所有 LES 在获得批准使用之前都要经过严格的安全评估。虽然干预数据表明 LES 对健康有益（与体重状况和血糖控制有关），但关于它们的使用仍存在争议，人群研究的结果也不一致，部分原因是存在潜在的促成因素，如反向因果关系。此外，评估通常只考虑 LES 的某些来源（例如 LES-饮料）和/或 LES 作为一个同质群体，尽管它们具有不同的生物学命运，因此不能充分捕捉个体 LES 的摄入量或可靠估计总体摄入量。为甜味剂消费开发/研究的尿生物标志物方法有可能通过提供更客观的摄入量数据来克服饮食数据的现有局限性，从而增强基于人群的研究。总之，同时研究游离糖和 LES 摄入量的这种生物标志物方法是及时的，代表了在一个具有重要公共卫生意义的领域的有趣发展。
