Cans of PepsiCo’s Pepsi Zero Sugar soda are displayed for an arranged photograph taken in Tiskilwa, Illinois, on Wednesday, April 17, 2019.
Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration disagrees with a World Health Organization finding that the widely used soda sweetener aspartame possibly causes cancer in humans, saying the studies used to achieve that conclusion had “significant shortcomings.”
“Aspartame is some of the studied food additives within the human food supply. FDA scientists should not have safety concerns when aspartame is used under the approved conditions,” an agency spokesperson said late Thursday shortly after the WHO released its findings.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a WHO body, found a possible link between aspartame and a kind of liver cancer called hepatocellular carcinoma after reviewing three large human studies within the U.S. and Europe.
Aspartame is used as an alternative to sugar in about 6,000 products worldwide, in line with the Calorie Control Council, a trade group that represents the manufacturers of artificial sweeteners.
Artificially sweetened beverages have historically been the largest source of exposure to aspartame. The sugar substitute is utilized in weight loss program sodas corresponding to Weight loss plan Coke and Pepsi Zero Sugar.
Aspartame is widely used since it is 200 times sweeter than sugar, which implies beverages containing the substitute taste much like products with sugar, but have a lower calorie count.
Dr. Mary Schubauer-Berigan, a senior official at IARC, emphasized that the WHO classification of aspartame as a possible carcinogen is predicated on limited evidence.
Schubauer-Berigan acknowledged during a news conference with journalists Wednesday that the studies could contain flaws that skewed the outcomes. She said the classification needs to be viewed as a call to conduct more research into whether aspartame may cause cancer in humans.
“This shouldn’t really be taken as a direct statement that indicates that there’s a known cancer hazard from consuming aspartame,” Schubauer-Berigan said.
The FDA spokesperson said the classification of aspartame as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” doesn’t mean the sugar substitute is definitely linked to cancer. Health Canada and the European Food Safety Authority have also concluded that aspartame is protected at the present permitted levels, the spokesperson said.
A separate body of international scientists called the Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives said Thursday that the evidence of an association between aspartame and cancer in humans shouldn’t be convincing. JECFA is a global group made up of scientists from the WHO and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
JECFA makes recommendations about how much of a product people can safely eat. The organization maintained its suggestion that it’s protected for an individual to eat 40 milligrams of aspartame per kilogram of body weight each day during their lifetime.
An adult who weighs 70 kilograms, or 154 kilos, would need to drink greater than nine to 14 cans of aspartame-containing soda each day to exceed the limit and potentially face health risks.
The U.S. Health and Human Services Department told the WHO in an August 2022 letter that JECFA is healthier suited to offer public health recommendations in regards to the safety of aspartame in food.
It’s because JECFA reviews all available data, each private and non-private proprietary information, whereas the IARC only looks at public data.
“Thus, an IARC review of aspartame, by comparison, can be incomplete and its conclusion might be confusing to consumers,” Mara Burr, who heads the HHS office of multilateral relations, wrote within the letter.
The FDA has a rather higher suggestion than JECFA and says it’s protected for an individual to eat 50 milligrams of aspartame per kilogram of body weight each day during their lifetime. A one that weighs 132 kilos would need to eat 75 packets of aspartame per day to achieve this limit.