Aspartame is one of the most widely used artificial sweeteners in the food industry worldwide, such as in Coca-Cola diet soft drinks, sweets, chewing gum or desserts, and next July it is expected to be declared as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization (WHO), as revealed by two sources involved in the process to the agency. Reuters news.
In May, the WHO already warned against non-sugar sweeteners, noting that they do not help to control weight in the long term, and may even increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems. According to the information in this regard published by Reuters, the IARC has issued its opinion after various meetings with its committee of external experts, and will subsequently issue its recommendations based on the available scientific evidence.
The body responsible for the intake recommendation will be the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), and the respective national Food Safety and Consumption agencies are also expected to issue their own criteria. The opinions of the IARC and JEFCA will be made public on July 14. According to sources cited by the agency, both agencies have worked in a “coordinated” and “complementary” manner in order to issue a clear message to the consumer. The objective, they have pointed out, is to establish the “carcinogenic risk” based on “certain conditions” and under “a certain level of exposure”.
The current regulation dates back to 1981, when JEFCA set the daily limits at which aspartame consumption would be safe; Specifically, it indicated that a 60-kilo adult should drink the equivalent of between 12 and 36 cans of ‘light’ soda daily – depending on the concentration of the sweetener in each drink – for it to be considered risky consumption. Most regulatory bodies in the United States and the European Union (EU) have taken this assessment into account. Currently, in Europe, food products containing aspartame must declare its presence on the label indicating its name or E 951).
The objective is to establish the “carcinogenic risk” of aspartame based on “certain conditions” and under “certain level of exposure”
The International Sweetener Association (ISA) has already advanced its opposition to the position. “IARC is not a food safety body and its review of aspartame is not scientifically comprehensive enough and is especially based on widely disproven research,” Frances Hunt-Wood, the association’s secretary general, told Reuters. .
The IARC, for its part, ensures that it has reviewed 1,300 published investigations until its last review in June. Last year, an observational study conducted in France involving more than 100,000 adults found that those who consumed the most aspartame had a slightly increased risk of cancer. In addition, the Ramazzini Institute (Italy) demonstrated with mice 20 years ago that the consumption of large amounts of this sweetener was related to cancer.
However, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has questioned the methodology of the second study, while the first, being observational, has not been able to establish a cause-and-effect relationship. The food and soft drink industry insists that the beneficial effects on health of eliminating added sugars must be taken into account, an objectively greater risk.
Rafael Urrialde de Andrés, professor at the Faculty of Biological Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid and at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the San Pablo-CEU University, and member of the Board of Directors of the Spanish Nutrition Society, has told SMC Spain that “you have to wait until July 14 and see how it determines the valuation and in which group it includes it. From there, the Agencies and Food Safety Authorities will have to determine if they re-evaluate, if they prohibit it or if they maintain authorization and under what conditions, if they continue with the same Acceptable Daily Intake, or decrease it, and to what extent its going down”.
In principle, the IARC would include this sweetener in the same group (‘Possibly carcinogenic to humans’) as coffee, gasoline or pickled vegetables. As he remembers on his Twitter Miguel Ángel Lurueña (@gominolasdpetro), PhD in Food Science and Technology “the IARC list does not classify substances by their danger, but by the level of evidence on their relationship with cancer.”
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