Found is many foods, aspartame, an artificial sweetener, was declared a possible cancer risk in humans. A new report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), found a connection between aspartame and cancer.
Aspartame can be found in Coca-Cola diet sodas, Mars’ Extra chewing gum and some Snapple drinks to name a few. But starting this month, IARC will list the artificial sweetener as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” for the first time.
Existing evidence from a 2022 French study found that adults who consumed higher quantities of artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, were at a slightly higher cancer risk than those those who didn’t. An Italian study linked aspartame to certain cancers in mice and rats.
IARC finalized this ruling “after a meeting of the group’s external experts, is intended to assess whether something is a potential hazard or not, based on all the published evidence,” Reuters reported. The ruling does not consider the amount a person can safely consume, which instead comes from JECFA (the Joint WHO and Food and Agriculture Organization’s Expert Committee on Food Additives), a separate WHO expert committee on food additives, alongside
Critics of IARC’s new ruling said that the “safety review did not consider the safe consumption levels of the product,” Causes.com reported
“IARC is not a food safety body. Aspartame is one of the most thoroughly researched ingredients in history, with over 90 food safety agencies across the globe declaring it is safe, including the European Food Safety Authority, which conducted the most comprehensive safety evaluation of aspartame to date,” Frances Hunt-Wood, secretary general of the International Sweeteners Association, said.
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