A sweetener is a substance used to impart a sweet taste to foods or in table-top sweeteners. On labels, this group is usually written as “sweetener (955)”, or by the E or INS code of the substance.
Vietnam regulates additives through a list of permitted additives (Circular 24/2019/TT-BYT, referencing international Codex standards); a substance not on the list is not permitted in Vietnam, and that is the first tier of the Yenzo Scale — see how levels are set.
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Fun fact. Saccharin was discovered in 1878 in the laboratory of chemistry professor Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins University. Constantin Fahlberg, a Russian chemist hired by an import firm in Baltimore, had Remsen’s permission to use the lab for his own research. One night that June, at dinner, he bit into a roll and found its crust remarkably sweet, because earlier that day he had spilled an experimental compound over his hands. He ran back to the laboratory and tasted everything on his worktable until he found the source: an overboiled beaker in which o-sulfobenzoic acid had reacted with phosphorus (V) chloride and ammonia, producing benzoic sulfinide, which is saccharin. In February 1879, Remsen and Fahlberg published a joint article describing two methods of saccharin synthesis. Source: The Pursuit of Sweet (Distillations, Science History Institute)
Sweeteners are used when a maker wants a sweet taste in a product or in a table-top sweetener. According to the Yenzo page for E951, aspartame is common in “sugar-free” or “zero” soft drinks, chewing gum, yoghurts and desserts with less sugar, drink powders and diet sweetener tablets. Each code has its own page listing the products where it is usually found.
Labels usually write the group name followed by the INS number in brackets, for example “sweetener (955)”, or the code E955, or the name of the substance (sucralose). A substance may be written in any of these ways.
Yenzo does not rank additives. Some codes of this group that have a page on Yenzo: E950 (acesulfame K), E951 (aspartame), E955 (sucralose), E960 (steviol glycosides), E967 (xylitol). All of them are named in Appendix 1 of Circular 24/2019/TT-BYT.
Updated 28 October 2026
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