The announcement this week by a World Health Organization agency that the artificial sweetener aspartame — used in such low-calorie products as Diet Coke, Trident gum and sugar-free Jell-O — is “possibly carcinogenic to humans” has many wondering if the food additive is safe to consume.
Thursday’s announcement from WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC, reclassifies aspartame, which has been in wide use since the 1980s and is sold under such brand names as NutraSweet and Equal.
At a news conference in Geneva, Dr. Francesco Branca, director of the Department of Nutrition and Food Safety at the WHO, said that concern was only for “high consumers” of diet soda and other foods containing aspartame and said that IARC had simply “raised a flag” for more research to be done.
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