Aspartame: Science Behind the Cancer Claims
Part 2 of 3
Last week I talked about some of the latest misleading headlines about the artificial sweeteners erythritol and Splenda. This week I’ve got big news about aspartame.
Aspartame is the artificial sweetener often found in blue packets with the name EQUAL or in soda under the name NutraSweet. According to headlines, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared it’s a possible cancer risk and “non-sugar sweeteners” should NOT be used for weight control.
Here are the details.
The cancer report was put together by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is part of the WHO. They classified aspartame as a possible carcinogen. This is how IARC defines a possible carcinogen.
“This category is used for agents, mixtures and exposure circumstances for which there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and less than sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals.”
The IARC has NOT found evidence that aspartame causes cancer in humans. They discovered that when you take 200 times more than what would be considered an average daily dose of aspartame, then inject it directly into rats, it causes cancer in those rats.
You read that right. Researchers injected 200 times the daily dose into rats. Is anyone surprised it caused cancer?
Want to know something else the IARC has declared as possibly carcinogenic? Using a cell phone. The cell phone claim came out in 2011, and since then, multiple studies have been carried out showing no links to cell phones and cancer.
The IARC later issued a statement, “A large number of studies have been performed over the last two decades to assess whether mobile phones pose a potential health risk. To date, no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use.”
There is no consideration for how much of a product someone can safely consume. If you drink too much water, you can experience hyponatremia or water intoxication. Marathon runners have died from drinking too much water.
The dose makes the poison.
Part of the problem with research on artificial sweeteners in humans is how the studies are carried out. Most are “observational” studies. That’s where scientists track what people eat and record what happens to them, while trying to link specific items to health outcomes. These types of studies can’t say that a specific action causes a specific result, but they can highlight trends and give you areas to dig deeper.
For over 20 years, we’ve been told that people who regularly drink diet sodas have an increased risk of weight gain, stroke and type 2 diabetes. The World Health Organization said, “Replacing free sugars with Non Sugar Sweeteners does NOT help with weight control in the long term.”
But that’s not what the research says. While we still lack good studies lasting 5-10 years, we have dozens of randomized control studies lasting up to one year. In 2022 there was a meta-analysis (a study that looked at many other studies) of artificially sweetened drinks, body weight and cardiometabolic risk.
In that study, researchers looked at 17 randomized clinical trials. In those studies, people were switched from sugar-sweetened beverages to low and no-calorie sweetened beverages. The subjects who SWITCHED to the artificial sweeteners had reduced body weight, body mass index, percentage of body fat, and intrahepatocellular lipid.
Even more surprising was that when people were switched to diet drinks, they lost three times as much weight as people who were switched to just water.
So where is the information coming from that says prolonged use of artificial sweeteners can lead to weight gain and chronic diseases? Some of it’s because of something called reverse causation. On average, people who drink diet sodas and consume low-calorie sweeteners tend to have higher rates of obesity and diabetes.
Artificial sweeteners aren’t causing obesity; people who are obese and have diabetes are more likely to consume artificial sweeteners.
Splenda and aspartame are two of the most heavily researched food additives ever sold. The European Food Safety Authority has deemed it safe. The World Health Organization under the “Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives” (JECFA) has said aspartame is safe to consume within daily limits.
JECFA says, “An adult weighing 132 pounds would have to drink between 12 and 36 cans of diet soda daily...to be at risk.” If you’re drinking more than 12 cans of diet soda a day, you have other issues you need to address.
Part 1 2 3
Reference Links:
WHO advises not to use non-sugar sweeteners for weight control in newly released guideline
Published 15 May 2022
Aspartame—True or False? Narrative Review of Safety Analysis of General Use in Products
Kamila Czarnecka, Aleksandra Pilarz, Aleksandra Rogut, Patryk Maj, Joanna Szymańska, Łukasz Olejnik, and Paweł Szymański
Nutrients, Published 2021 Jun 7. doi: 10.3390/nu13061957
Association of Low- and No-Calorie Sweetened Beverages as a Replacement for Sugar-Sweetened Beverages With Body Weight and Cardiometabolic Risk - A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
Néma D. McGlynn; Tauseef Ahmad Khan, Lily Wang
JAMA Network Open, Published March 14, 2022
Effects of Sweeteners on the Gut Microbiota: A Review of Experimental Studies and Clinical Trials
Francisco Javier Ruiz-Ojeda, Julio Plaza-Díaz, Maria Jose Sáez-Lara, Angel Gil
Advances in Nutrition, Published 06 June 2017 - Cite this as: BMJ 2017;357:j2353
Blautia—a new functional genus with potential probiotic properties?
Xuemei Liu, Bingyong Mao, Jiayu Gu, Jiaying Wu, Shumao Cui, Gang Wang, Jianxin Zhao, Hao Zhang & Wei Chen
Gut Microbes, Published online: 01 Feb 2021 - https://doi.org/10.1080/19490976.2021.1875796
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7/2/2023
