WHO has declared that it has classified aspartame, an artificial sweetener commonly used in soft drinks, as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”, leaving the acceptable daily intake level unchanged. “We are not advising companies to recall products, nor are we advising consumers to stop consuming them altogether,” said Francesco Branca, director of nutrition and food safety at the World Health Organization.
“We’re just advising some restraint,” he said at a press conference featuring the results of two reviews of the available evidence on aspartame. WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) carried out its first assessment of the carcinogenicity of aspartame during a meeting in Lyon, France from June 6 to 13. “The working group has classified aspartame as possibly carcinogenic to humans,” WHO said. It was placed in the Group 2B category, based on tests that specifically targeted hepatocellular carcinoma, a type of liver cancer.
Other tests were performed on laboratory animals. The Group 2B category also contains aloe vera extract and caffeic acid found in tea and coffee, said Paul Pharoah, professor of cancer epidemiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “The general public should not be concerned about the cancer risk associated with a chemical classified as group 2B,” he said. IARC’s Mary Schubauer-Berigan said the evidence for hepatocellular carcinoma comes from three studies, conducted in the United States and 10 European countries.
“These are the only epidemiological studies that have looked at liver cancer,” he told reporters. Branca added: “We have, in a sense, sent a signal, indicating that we need to clarify the situation much better”, but neither is it “something we can liquidate”. A second group, the JECFA, the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives formed by WHO and another United Nations agency, the Food and Agriculture Organization, met in Geneva from 27 June to July 6 to evaluate the risks associated with aspartame and concluded that there is no reason to change the acceptable daily allowance established in 1981, from zero to 40 milligrams of aspartame per kilogram of body weight.
With a can of sugar-free soft drink typically containing 200 or 300 mg of the sweetener aspartame, an adult weighing 70 kilograms would therefore need to consume more than 9-14 cans per day to exceed the limit, assuming no further aspartame is taken from other sources . “The problem is with big consumers,” Branca said. “Those who drink a soda once in a while shouldn’t worry,” she concluded.