Aspartame and high-fructose corn syrup
Aspartamo y jarabe de maíz de alta fructosa
- Date
- 1965-1967 · confidence high
- Place
- G. D. Searle, Skokie, Illinois, United States (aspartame); Clinton Corn Processing, Clinton, Iowa (HFCS, 1967)
- Credited to
- James Schlatter (aspartame, 1965, approved in 1981); Richard Marshall and Earl Kooi (isomerase, 1957); Yoshiyuki Takasaki (industrial process, Japan)
- People
- 👤 Earl R. Kooi1917–2003👤 James M. Schlatter1930–2019👤 Richard Marshall1895–1973👤 Yoshiyuki Takasaki1934–
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Synthetic sweetener 200 times sweeter than sugar with no calories, and cheap syrup obtained enzymatically from maize. They reshaped the soft-drink and processed-food industry.
What it led to
- Diet soft drinks and the dieting industry
- The mass consumption of cheap sugar and the obesity epidemic
- Scientific and regulatory debates over sweeteners
Built on
- Glucose syrup by starch hydrolysis1811
- Isolation and characterization of fructose1846-1847
- peptide chemistry
- industrial enzymology
- maize subsidies
Made possible
- Sucralose1976
- diet soft drinks
- ultra-processed foods