Demonised sweetener aspartame is the new gluten

APRIL 29, 2015

PepsiCo is dropping aspartame from Diet Pepsi in the US. Source: AP
ASPARTAME has been demonised as causing cancer, Parkinson’s disease, diabetes and multiple sclerosis.
This week, it was removed from Diet Pepsi in the US in response to consumer concerns over its safety and a steady decline in sales.
“Aspartame is the number one reason consumers are dropping diet soda,” said Seth Kaufman, vice president of Pepsi.
But repeated tests have shown it is not harmful to humans at levels typically consumed. It has become the new gluten, or worse, vilified as a deadly risk to our health by “wellness bloggers” and conspiracy theorists across the internet.

Coca-Cola has not dropped aspartame from Diet Coke, but it does offer Coca-Cola Life, sweetened with a blend of sugar and stevia leaf extract. Source: Getty Images
The artificial sweetener is still found in many other soft drinks, including Diet Coke and PepsiCo’s second most popular product, Mountain Dew. It is also present in weight loss products, yoghurts, cereals and sugar-free chewing gum.
The rhetoric around the ingredient is extreme. Van Hari, aka the Food Babe, called it “one of the most dangerous substances allowed in our food supply”, linking it to auto-immune disorders, depression and birth defects. A website devoted to aspartame calls it a “flame retardant chemical” that accounts for “75 per cent of adverse reactions to food additives”.
The sweetener, which can be up to 200 times sweeter than sugar, has been the subject of controversy since it was approved for use in 1980.
In 2006/7, the European Ramazzini Foundation (ERF) suggested it could cause cancer in rats at levels of consumption close to that of humans, but this was refuted by the European Food Safety Authority in 2009.

The alternatives hardly seem to be any better. Source: News Limited
Food Standards Australia New Zealand also reviewed the ERF study and agreed aspartame was safe at current levels.
The US National Cancer Institute conducted a study of nearly half a million people in 2006, and found that aspartame did not increase the risk of leukaemia, lymphoma or brain cancer.
In 2010, two more studies — one by the ERF and one by Halldorsson et al — suggested an increased risk of cancer and premature birth when consuming aspartame.
As the scare stories continued, the EFSA conducted a comprehensive review of the evidence in 2013 and concluded that aspartame was safe for human consumption, including pregnant women and children.
The only instance in which it is agreed to be a risk is if you have the rare genetic disorder phenylketonuria, for which all newborn babies in Australia are screened.

US fast-food chain Chipotle this week announced it will only use non-GMO ingredients. Source: AFP
Artificial sweeteners including saccharin and cyclamates, once linked to cancer in animals, have now been cautiously approved by the World Cancer Research Fund, which says the evidence doesn’t suggest any “detectable effect” on cancer risk.
This year, the UK’s Food Standards Agency set out to determine reactions to aspartame in the many people who anecdotally report negative symptoms. It concluded that participants who were self-diagnosed as sensitive to aspartame showed no difference in response after consuming it.
“Decades of studies have shown that aspartame is safe, but the reality is thatconsumer demand in the US has been evolving,” said Kaufman, according toBloomberg. “The US diet cola consumer has been asking and asking and asking for an aspartame-free great diet cola.”
Diet Pepsi has replaced aspartame with sucralose — a sweetener commonly known as Splenda — and acesulfame potassium. These products have not caused nearly as much fear as aspartame, although the Center for Science in the Public Interest recommends “caution” over sucralose because of an unpublished 2012 Italian study that said it caused leukaemia in mice, and “avoiding” acesulfame potassium because of rat studies suggesting it causes cancer.

However, GMOs are found in 80 per cent of foodstuffs. Source: News Corp Australia
Russell Keast, from Deakin University, told news.com.au: “The safety of aspartame has been established and unless you are looking at concentrations that have no relevance to the food supply there is no evidence of any harm. However, consumers are often concerned by additives and the fact they are not natural. MSG suffers from a similar perception.
“As a sweetener, aspartame suffers as its sweetness profile is not similar to sucrose and there are other artificial sweeteners such as sucralose that have better sweetness profile. There are also the new natural sweeteners such as stevia that are starting to make an impact, although again the sweetness profile is far from ideal.”
In an extensive report, the Medicine Journal quoted Dr David Hattan from the Food and Drug Administration: “The legitimate attempts that have been made to confirm and replicate allegations of adverse reactions from aspartame ingestion have not been successful and the USFDA continues to consider this to be among the most thoroughly tested of food additives and this information continues to confirm the safety of aspartame.”
The bottom line for manufacturers is that negative connotations around specific ingredients are having a detrimental effect on their bottom line. They are scrambling to please consumers nervous about demon ingredients with new (and pricier) products.
Diet Pepsi to Drop Aspartame; Will Sales Sweeten?
Coca-Cola recently introduced Coca-Cola Life, sweetened with a blend of sugar and stevia, and Fairlife milk, which has 50 per cent more protein than regular milk — even though most Western consumers have plenty of protein in their diet.
Then there’s A2 milk, which eliminates the protein A1 because of controversial claims it causes symptoms associated with lactose intolerance, although the Dieticians Association of Australia says there is “no solid scientific evidence demonstrating that A2 milk is better for you than regular milk”.
It’s unlikely these changes are making the important difference to our health. The Atlantic compared the sweetener controversy to that over GMOs, pointing out that genetically-modified organisms are in 80 per cent of our food, so a GMO-free product isn’t going to have a great impact.
Ultimately, it’s a personal decision. If there’s no harm done, many consumers think, why not pick up a gluten-free, GMO-free, aspartame-free product? It sounds healthier, after all.
Sweeteners, like sugar, are far from an ideal ingredient to be regularly consuming at high levels. But these faddy trends are an expensive, pointless and sometimes hysterical distraction from the simple ways we can be healthier, such as eating more vegetables, exercising, choosing smaller portions and restricting the marketing of junk food.
Let’s not give misleading, unqualified health “experts” like Belle Gibson and her kind any more oxygen.