EU all-clear for sweetener aspartame?

EU Food Safety Authority classifies sweetener aspartame as harmless

12/11/2013

The sweetener aspartame was repeatedly criticized in the past. Thus, the artificial sugar substitute was suspected of being carcinogenic, damaging the genetic material and adversely affecting cognitive abilities. However, the risk assessment of the substance and its degradation products by the EU Food Authority (EFSA) recently concluded that aspartame is harmless in the amounts it contains in food.

EU Food Authority: Aspartame does not increase the risk of cancer
A communication from EFSA states: „After a careful evaluation of the findings from animal and human studies, the experts were able to exclude the potential risk of genotype damage or carcinogenesis by aspartame.“ During pregnancy, the phenylalanine in aspartame also poses no risk to the developing fetus. „The EFSA experts also concluded that aspartame does not harm the brain or nervous system and does not affect behavior or cognitive function in children or adults“, it goes on.

Aspartame is used as a sugar substitute in, among other things, soft drinks, chewing gum, sweets and diet products. But since the 200 times sweeter remedy than sugar on the market, consumers worried about potential health risks.

„This opinion is one of the most comprehensive risk assessments of aspartame ever conducted. It is an important step in strengthening consumer confidence in the scientific substantiation of the EU food safety system and in the regulation of food additives“, said Alicja Mortensen, Chair of EFSA's Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources.

Criticizing the risk assessment of aspartame
Above all, critics complain about the selection of studies the agency has used for the risk assessment. „EFSA relies on many poorly conducted and misreported industrial studies of the 1970s“, Erik Millstone, professor of science policy at the University of Sussex, writes in a nearly 70-page dossier. The studies considered had already caused a dispute in the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) until aspartame was finally approved in 1981. Millstone also notes that the studies have received different assessments: „The 27 studies indicating a health hazard from aspartame were critically analyzed and eventually unified as 'not relevant' to the safety assessment.“ In contrast, the studies that rated the sweetener as safe were readily included in the risk assessment. „If the studies were measured with the same cubes, the result of the aspartame evaluation would probably look very different“, emphasizes Millstone. Whilst the critical studies were funded by independent sources, the research that rated aspartame as harmless almost always involved organizations with commercial interests.

Morando Soffritti, scientific director at the European Ramazzini Institute in Bologna, also criticizes the result of the risk assessment of the sweetener. In independent long-term studies of the institute, the cancer potential of aspartame was investigated. It was found that more than 3,000 rats and mice had an increased number of tumors in the lung, blood, liver, breast and lymph nodes in this as well as in two other feeding studies. (Ag)

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