The Food and Drug Administration has approved advantame.
Washington/FDA -- The Food and Drug Administration has approved advantame, aspartame's intensely sweet cousin, to enter the U.S. food market. Advantame is the sixth artificial sweetener on the U.S. market to receive the FDA's blessing as a safe food additive.
Advantame joins five other artificial sweeteners: saccharine, aspartame, sucralose, neotame and acesulfame potassium. Advantame is 20,000 times sweeter, gram per gram, than table sugar, making it the sweetest, by far, of the bunch. (Aspartame, sucralose and saccharine range from 200-700 times sweeter than table sugar.) The white crystalline sweetener flows freely and dissolves in water.