Opinion: Move aspartame way down your worry list — via fpcomment
To determine whether an agent is carcinogenic or not, IARC does a hazard-based assessment, meaning it looks at an agent’s potential to cause harm, not the likelihood it actually will. But IARC is not a food safety agency and its findings say nothing about whether reasonable consumption would constitute a risk for consumers.
Consumers need to understand that the responsibilities of the IARC are very different from those of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives and that it uses quite different methods. JECFA has never found aspartame to be carcinogenic, while IARC, in the long list of products it has evaluated, almost always finds agents to be carcinogenic — because it does not take into account how much a reasonable consumer will take in.
For aspartame to be included in the 2B category, only one of the following characteristics needs to be met: “limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans, or sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals, or strong mechanistic evidence, showing that the agent exhibits key characteristics of human carcinogens.” “Limited evidence” means the agency does not need to establish a linear relationship between the agent and cancer in the same way it does in Group 1.
The problem with IARC’s classifications is that ultimately they give consumers very limited information. When we remove exposure levels, i.e., dosage, from the equation, almost anything can become harmful. The sun is harmful on a hot summer day, yet most consumers limit their exposure by applying sunscreen or seeking shade.
Aspartame and similar food additives have helped us move away from an additive we probably should consume with more care: sugar. Overconsumption of sugar can lead to significant health problems, including obesity and diabetes. Scaring people off artificial sweeteners by blurring the realities of risk perception risks pushing them back to sugar-sweetened drinks that are ultimately worse for them.
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