Assessment of Aspartame Exposure Due to Consumption of Some Imported Chewing Gums by Microwave Digestion and High Performance Liquid Chromatography Analysis

Abstract

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.

Chemical composition and thermal properties of Pistacia atlantica subsp. Kurdica gum

“…In order to determine the total carbohydrates (TC) content, 4 g of crude gum was dissolved in a final volume of 100 mL of distilled water at 50 °C and then filtered through Whatman no. 1 filter paper [19]. The total carbohydrate content of the 4% solution was determined by the phenol-sulfuric acid colorimetric method with d-glucose as the standard at 490 nm [20].…”