Category: sweetener
Aliases: E952, Cyclamate, Sodium cyclohexylsulfamate, Sodium N-cyclohexylsulfamate, Cyclohexylsulfamic acid sodium salt, Sucaryl, Assugrin, Cyclamic acid
The sodium salt of cyclamic acid (N-cyclohexylsulfamate), a first-generation high-intensity sweetener roughly 30-50x sweeter than sucrose — the least potent of the synthetic sweeteners — with a clean sweet taste lacking the metallic note of saccharin, with which it is classically blended for synergy. Sweetness arises from agonism at the sweet-taste receptor heterodimer T1R2/T1R3 on lingual taste cells, triggering gustducin-coupled signaling; it carries no metabolizable calories. Most of an ingested dose passes unabsorbed to the colon and is excreted in feces and urine unchanged. In a minority of people, colonic flora (enterococci, certain enterobacteria/clostridia) express cyclamate sulfamatase, hydrolyzing it to cyclohexylamine — a sympathomimetic amine and the focus of historical bladder-tumor and reproductive-toxicity concern. Unlike aspartame, it is heat-stable and suitable for baking.
E952; ~30-50x sweeter than sucrose, non-nutritive and heat-stable. JECFA ADI 0-11 mg/kg bw (as cyclamic acid); EU SCF 0-7 mg/kg bw. Approved in the EU and ~100 countries but banned for food use in the United States since 1969 after rat bladder-tumor findings in a cyclamate-saccharin mix; the metabolite cyclohexylamine drives the residual safety concern, so exposure depends on individual gut-flora conversion.