Aspartame is possibly carcinogenic, but the advice of a maximum of 40 milligrams per kilo of body weight does not change. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there is “limited evidence” that the sweetener can cause cancer.
The safety of aspartame, 200 times sweeter than sugar with hardly any calories, has been under discussion since the sweetener with E number 951 caused cancer in a 2006 rat experiment. Evidence for the risks of aspartame has always been thin. Yet the suspicion remained, partly because it has been put in so many products since the eighties. Especially in soft drinks and other foods, and even in toothpaste and medicines. Aspartame is one of the most commonly used sweeteners, often in combination with other sugar substitutes.
The WHO bases its new statements on aspartame on the work of two organisations: the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified aspartame as ‘potentially carcinogenic’, an expert committee on added substances looked at the maximum acceptable daily intake and decided nothing. to change: 40 milligrams per kilo of body weight is still considered safe.
Three cohort studies
For someone weighing 70 kilos, that amounts to 4.5 liters of Diet Coke per day. No more than 600 milligrams of aspartame per liter may be used in soft drinks. Although the amount of aspartame can add up because it’s in so many products, most people probably stay below the recommended maximum.
The announcement of the WHO position on aspartame caused unrest in advance. Because what does ‘potentially carcinogenic’ mean? And what is “limited evidence”? Population studies have found links between the consumption of diet sodas – the main source of aspartame – and cancer, but the findings have not always been consistent, researchers write in The Lancet Oncology this week in a background article for the WHO. An association with liver cancer was found in three cohort studies. But because it can never be completely ruled out that something else caused the cancer, they call the evidence for liver cancer ‘limited’, and ‘insufficient’ for other types of cancer – classifications agreed internationally for cancer research.
Risk demonstrated
In lab studies, aspartame caused all kinds of cancer in animals, but there was no agreement within the committee about the strength of the evidence. A number of members considered the risk sufficiently demonstrated, but most were critical of the design of the studies and the interpretation of the results.
Experiments have also often looked at the mechanism that causes cancer. For example, aspartame would lead to chronic inflammation, among other things. But here too there are still too many questions to speak of hard evidence.
Read also: We are only now slowly discovering what sweeteners do in the body
Consume more sugar
The sweetener industry fought back weeks before the WHO made its evaluation public, and after the WHO also recommended that sweeteners not to be used for weight loss. The authority of the agency for cancer research became in doubt drawn. And it was shielded from years of research proving the safety of aspartame. “The risk falls into the same category as that of kimchi and pickles,” the trade association now says. The international soft drink manufacturers immediately translated the WHO message as: ‘aspartame is safe‘. They previously warned that any other suggestion would “trick” consumers into consuming more sugar.
Francesco Branca, head of the WHO’s nutrition and health department, did have an answer to this when presenting the evaluation. He thinks that aspartame is not a risk for those who occasionally drink a can of diet soda. But: “If consumers have to choose between cola with sweeteners or sugar, consider a third option, and that is drinking water.”