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Food scientists, regulators and manufacturers have affirmed the safety of approved low and no-calorie sweeteners, urging the Federal Government and industry to strengthen science-based regulation, local innovation and public communication around their use in Nigeria.
They made the call at a workshop, Low and No Calorie Sweeteners in Nigeria: The Science and Safety, in Lagos. Co-convened by the NIFST Academy, the capacity-building arm of the Nigerian Institute of Food Science and Technology, and the International Sweeteners Association (ISA), the meeting brought together senior officials of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), Association of Food, Beverage and Tobacco Employers, academics and public health officials.
NIFST president, Dr Bola Osinowo, said the collaboration with ISA aligned with the academy’s mandate to “build competence, create value and deliver sustainable impact that is backed by science and data.”
She challenged stakeholders to examine how Nigeria could better utilise global safety evaluations by the Joint Food and Agriculture Organisation/World Health Organisation Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) to streamline domestic approvals, support local manufacturers developing high-quality, stable, sugar-reduced products and improve risk communication to counter misinformation.
The workshop said “approved low- and no-calorie sweeteners are safe for consumer use, based on decades of animal and human studies reviewed by independent scientific and regulatory bodies.”
Director General, ISA, Laurent Oger, said international safety assessments were based on the totality of scientific evidence rather than individual studies, with regulators considering toxicology, genotoxicity, carcinogenicity, reproductive and human studies, as well as study quality, relevance, consistency and biological plausibility.
He explained that the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) for each sweetener is derived by identifying the No Observed Adverse Effect Level in the most sensitive tested species and applying a conservative 100-fold safety margin; 10-fold for differences between species and another 10-fold for variability among humans.
The process, he said, provides “an estimate of the amount that can be consumed daily over an entire lifetime without appreciable health risk.”
Oger cited a 2018 global review, which found that even high-consuming groups remained below established ADIs among children and adults. He also referenced JECFA’s 2023 reaffirmation of aspartame’s safety assessment, retaining its ADI at 40 milligrammes per kilogramme of body weight per day, with no convincing evidence of harm at current consumption levels.
He said the global safety framework extends from JECFA assessments to Codex Alimentarius standards and regulatory reviews by bodies including the European Food Safety Authority and the United States Food and Drug Administration.
Stakeholders noted that Nigeria already has regulatory provisions covering sweeteners, including NAFDAC’s Food Additives Regulations 2021 and Non-Nutritive Sweeteners in Food Products Regulations 2021.
However, they identified gaps including a “knowledge-awareness paradox”: while up to 73.5 per cent of Nigerians are aware of sweeteners, a majority lack functional understanding of their safety. They also pointed to the absence of national dietary intake databases for tracking real-world exposure and the technical challenge of developing stable sweetener blends for Nigeria’s hot and humid conditions.
The meeting resolved to launch coordinated, evidence-based risk-communication campaigns targeting nutritionists, dietitians and medical practitioners to bridge the knowledge gap and counter online misinformation.
The stakeholders also called for streamlined, fast-track regulatory approvals for products reformulated with JECFA-approved sweetener systems, harmonised with Codex Alimentarius standards, alongside regulatory and fiscal incentives to encourage local product innovation.
They further agreed that food scientists and industry research and development teams should jointly investigate sweetener-blend stability under tropical storage conditions, while academic institutions should conduct longitudinal dietary intake surveys across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones.
