This nutrient-dense sweetener has been widely used since the 1980s as a table-top sweetener, but it can also be found in many areas of everyday life.
The warning signal is sounded: the World Health Organization (WHO) now considers that aspartame, this artificial sweetener used in sodas, is “possibly carcinogenic to humans“, but the daily dose considered safe remains unchanged.
After reviewing 1,300 scientific studies, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), within the WHO, has indeed placed aspartame in group 2B on the basis of “limited indications” relating to cancer in children. in humans, in particular, for hepatocellular carcinoma, which is a type of liver cancer.
From 9 to 14 “light” cans per day
But these works absolutely do not make it possible to say from which consumption of aspartame, this risk of disease appears. This is why the organization responsible for translating scientific data into recommendations, which is a different body, has, for its part, chosen not to modify its advice to consumers today. According to these recommendations, a 70-kilo adult can therefore still theoretically consume between 9 and 14 cans of “light” drinks per day without risk. However, aspartme is also incorporated into prepared meals, chewing gum, gelatin, ice cream and breakfast cereals, as well as medicines, such as cough drops, and other other products such as toothpaste…
In addition, the Joint Committee of Experts on Food Additives of WHO and FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Agency) met from June 27 to July 6 to evaluate the risks associated with aspartame. It concluded that the data assessed did not provide sufficient grounds for changing the acceptable daily intake established since 1981 to a maximum of 40 mg per kilogram of body weight and therefore a person can consume aspartame “safely”. within the limit of this daily quantity.
Only very heavy consumers of aspartame need worry, as this joint WHO committee asserts. And the International Sweeteners Association was very quick to welcome it in a press release. However, this status quo “surprise” the epidemiologist and nutritionist Serge Hercberg, because with a product classified as a potential carcinogen: he expected the recommended doses to be reduced, in the name of the precautionary principle. Especially since last year, a study of I’National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) has pointed to a statistical link between sweetener consumption and increased risk of cancer, and this from doses much lower than those currently recommended.
What nutritional interest?
More recently, the European scientific committee in charge of reassessing the Nutriscore, for its part, decided to downgrade the rating of food products containing sweeteners. In addition, the World Health Organization (WHO) itself has questioned the interest of light products for health.
So why take unnecessary risks? Consumers may wonder, because it turns out that despite their sweetening power 200 times higher than sucrose (which reduces calorie intake), sweeteners maintain an attraction for the sweet taste and do not allow not control long-term weight gain. It is the World Health Organization which also very officially indicated this in a press release last May. For the WHO, sweeteners have no nutritional value, except for people suffering from diabetes.