Available for more than 30 years, aspartame has been approved for use in more than 100 countries around the world.
The World Health Organization’s (WHO) finding that aspartame remains safe underscores the extensive reviews that have shown it. More than 90 reputable global scientific and food regulatory agencies have extensively reviewed aspartame and found it to be safe.
The Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) is mandated by the WHO to evaluate ingredients such as aspartame and determine their safety. After a thorough re-evaluation, JECFA concluded that there are no concerns about the negative effects of consuming aspartame at current levels and confirmed the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI), underlining its previous conclusion that aspartame is safe.
JECFA’s decision not only confirms four decades of science that aspartame is safe, but also provides a factual framework for the safe consumption of this ingredient.
To arrive at JECFA’s conservative estimates of the Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI), an average person weighing 70 kg would need to consume about 14 cans of diet soda or about 74 packets of a tabletop sweetener containing aspartame every day in their lifetime for raise security concern.
Obviously, this level of consumption is not realistic, not recommended, nor does it align with the intended use of these ingredients.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) also published the report summarizing the risk assessment for aspartame. IARC is not a regulatory agency or food safety authority. IARC looks for substances that could potentially cause cancer without taking into account actual dietary intake and has found that many things, such as drinking hot water and working at night, are probably carcinogenic. Citing “limited evidence” of carcinogenicity in humans, IARC classified aspartame as possibly carcinogenic to humans (IARC Group 2B) and JECFA confirmed an acceptable daily intake of 40 mg/kg body weight.
The two agencies conducted independent but complementary reviews to assess the potential carcinogenic risk and other health risks associated with aspartame consumption. This was the first time IARC evaluated aspartame and the third time for JECFA.
JECFA concluded that the data assessed did not provide sufficient reason to change the previously established acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 0–40 mg/kg body weight for aspartame.
Aspartame is a very well-tested food additive with a comprehensive set of studies conducted in animal models and in humans. All these studies show that aspartame is safe.
Consumers have a strong desire for reliable and scientific information, and JECFA’s review confirms the overwhelming body of evidence that aspartame is safe.
To claim otherwise is misleading, inaccurate, and fear-mongering for the nearly 540 million people worldwide living with diabetes and the millions of others managing their weight who rely on and/or choose products containing low- and no-calorie sweeteners such as aspartame.
Consumers looking to low- and no-calorie sweeteners – including aspartame – for sugar management and calorie reduction can continue to feel comfortable knowing that it’s a proven safe and effective option based on findings from global health organizations looking at relevant scientific evidence regularly.
[1] The acceptable daily intake (ADI) is an estimate of the amount of a substance in food or drinking water that can be consumed daily over a lifetime without presenting a significant risk to health.
