The sweetener aspartame - found in a variety of foods - is set to be officially labelled as "possibly carcinogenic to humans", reports claim.
The sweetener has been used for decades and approved by food safety bodies, but there has been a swirl of controversy around the ingredient. "The IARC categorisation won't tell us anything about the actual level of risk from aspartame, because that's not what IARC categorisations mean," says Kevin McConway, professor of statistics at the Open University.The "possibly" category is used when there is "limited" evidence in people or data from animal experiments. It includes diesel, talc on the perineum, nickel, aloe vera, Asian pickled vegetables and a host of chemical substances.
But the risk of giving 100 people an extra 1.7oz of bacon - on top of any they already eat - every single day for the rest of their lives would lead toWe do not have the equivalent numbers for aspartame, however, the Joint World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization's Expert Committee on Food Additives is due to report in July.
Rick Mumford, the deputy chief scientific adviser to the UK's Food Standards Agency, said the body would "closely study" the reports, but "our view is that the safety of this sweetener has been evaluated by various scientific committees and it is considered safe at current permitted use levels".
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