Saccharin (E954)

Names on a label

• E954
• E 954
• Saccharin

Labels outside Europe often print the number on its own, without the E.

What it’s used for

The FDA lists these uses in food: non-nutritive sweetener.¹

What regulators and scientists say

• EFSA set an acceptable daily intake of 9 mg per kilogram of body weight per day (September 24, 2024). For a 70 kg (154 lb) adult, that’s about 630 mg a day.²
• The FDA permits it in food on an interim basis, pending additional study (21 CFR 172.812, 180.37).¹
• IARC classifies it as not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans (Group 3, 1999).³

An acceptable daily intake is, in EFSA’s words, “an estimate of the amount of a substance in food or drinking water that can be consumed daily over a lifetime without presenting an appreciable risk to health.”⁴

IARC’s groups “indicate the strength of the evidence as to whether an agent is capable of causing cancer,” but they don’t measure how likely cancer is at a given level of exposure.⁵