Synthetic Sweeteners /Artificial sweeteners or sugar substitutes are synthetic substances employed to replace sugar during the sweetening process of several products, such as sweets, preserves, dairy products and beverages. The molecules in artificial sweeteners include principally sulfa, dipeptide and sucrose derivatives. These compounds provide a sweet taste without increasing caloric intake and blood sugar levels. Therefore, due to their high efficiency (30–13,000 times the sweetening power of sucrose), a small amount of these compounds provides high sweetness without a caloric intake increase . Nonetheless, the amount of use must be safe to guarantee consumers’ health . Some of them including aspartame, neotame, saccharin, acesulfame-k, sucralose and advantame, which have been approved as food additives by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) . Synthetic sugar substitutes must have a sucrose-like taste quality and demonstrate safety, with non-toxicity and cariogenic capacity and no effects on blood glucose or insulin. However, some studies suggest that these non-caloric sweeteners might cause an ambiguous psychobiological signal that confuses the body’s regulatory mechanisms. Nowadays, the major part of sweeteners available on the market are synthetic compounds. However, they must grant legislative approval and the regulatory requirements of each country. These compounds have undergone a wide safety evaluation process by international and national regulatory food safety authorities, such as the FAO/WHO Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) . Moreover, these authorities continuously review and evaluate any new safety information related to them. In this sense, some problems have been attributed to some of these compounds in terms of their stability, cost, quality of taste and safety . However, over the past few years, because of health concerns, consumers are demanding more natural and healthy foods that are produced in a sustainable way. Thus, food manufacturers are looking for natural and functional sweeteners to be applied in foods .
