The artificial sweetener aspartame, one of the most widely used sugar substitutes in the world, has been declared "possibly carcinogenic" by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Still, advice on what constitutes a safe intake of aspartame is not being updated.
Aspartame is an artificial sweetener that has long been deemed safe for use in food and is 200 times sweeter than real sugar. It gives a sweet taste to food items but without the calories.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which examines the potential risks of developing cancer from a variety of agents, now classified aspartame as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" based on 1,300 recent studies on the possible link between aspartame and cancer.
Limited scientific evidence
It is important to note that the verdict does not put a figure on how much aspartame a person can safely ingest, rather that the chemical itself has the risk of being carcinogenic. The category "possibly" is used when "limited scientific evidence" has been found in humans or data in experiments with animals.
This means there is "limited" evidence that aspartame could be carcinogenic; not strong and/or sufficiently serious evidence, otherwise it would have been classified as "carcinogenic to humans" or "likely carcinogenic to humans."
"The evidence was not of sufficiently high quality or convincing enough. This is actually more of a call for science to study the sweetener even more," Dr Mary Schubauer-Bergian of the IARC said.
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During a press conference, Francesco Branca, WHO's director of nutrition, recognised that the debate about aspartame and possible health effects has been ongoing for years, with conclusions and opinions that are not always clear and sometimes even contradictory.
"If consumers have a choice between either cola with artificial sweetener or sweetener with real sugar, I think they should consider a third option: water," he said. The WHO is not asking companies to completely eliminate aspartame from their products but wants them – like consumers – to use it in moderation.
