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Simultaneous determination of three artificial sweeteners, neotame (NE), alitame (AL) and aspartame (APM) in various foods by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was developed. Chopped or homogenized samples were packed into cellulose tubing with 0.01 mol/L hydrochloric acid containing 10% sodium chloride, and dialyzed against 0.01 mol/L hydrochloric acid for 24-48 hours. The dialyzate was passed through an Oasis (R) MCX cartridge, and the cartridge was washed with water and methanol. Then the three sweeteners were eluted from the cartridge with a mixture of 0.5 mol/L ammonium chloride-acetonitrile (3: 2). The sweeteners were separated on a Cosmosil 5C18-AR column using a gradient mode with a mobile phase of 0.01 mol/L phosphate buffer (pH 4.0)-acetonitrile and were detected at 2 10 nm.

The recoveries of NE, AL and APM from 8 kinds of foods spiked with 10 and 100 mu g/g were 86-100% and 89-104%, respectively. The detection limits of NE, AL and APM were 1 mu g/g in samples. Furthermore, the three sweeteners were successfully identified by using liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry.