Determination of aspartame and alitame in liquid dairy products and milk-containing beverages in the Chinese market

Aspartame and alitame are a type of food additives commonly used in recent years. However, it is difficult to con-clude that long-term use of synthetic sweeteners is completely harmless. This study aimed to establish a simple high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method to detect these two sweeteners, and to measure the concentrations of sweeteners in liquid dairy products and milk-containing beverages in the Chinese market. In this experiment, aspartame and alitame had a good linearity, and the average recovery values were also good with the relative standard deviations (RSDs) of 0.4–2.2%. The limits of detections (LODs) were 0.52 and 0.48 µg g–1 for aspartame and alitame, respectively. According to consumer daily purchase habits, 100 samples were purchased from supermarkets and milk tea shops in Jinan, China. The results showed that the amount of sweeteners added in all samples did not exceed the national standards, but there was a problem that the food label content was incomplete. We hope that the relevant departments would strengthen supervision and management of food labelling, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.