Consumer groups launch petition to ban aspartame in Europe

https://www.euronews.com/health/2025/02/05/no-place-in-our-food-consumer-groups-launch-petition-to-ban-aspartame-in-europe

by euronews-english

25 comments

  1. Lmao why it’s one of the most tested and safest sweeteners.
    Leave my coke 0 alone

  2. “The IARC recommends limiting daily intake of the artificial sweetener to 40 mg/kg body weight. This would represent around a dozen cans of a sugar-free beverage for an adult weighing 70 kg. ”

    Compared to the risks that come with large amounts of sugar, aspartame is a lot safer.

  8. Not going to say aspartame is healthy but you would need to drink a case of Coke Zero a day to have a problem ….

  9. I just wish it wasn’t in everything. I can’t stand the taste of it, so I gave up sodas

  10. Since the sugar tax on soft drinks was introduced here in Ireland several years ago, they mostly seem to contain aspartame and/or Sucralose — had the effect of stopping me drinking soft drinks almost completely as they all now taste like something you might use to clean the kitchen sink.

  12. This is pretty stupid, aspartame is an additive in some “sugar-free” foods – it is easily avoided.

    It is also “possibly carcinogenic”, whereas processed meats are a Group 1 carcinogen (“known to cause cancer” – same group as smoking and asbestos) and are widely sold across Europe, including marketing directly to children:

    https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/cancer-carcinogenicity-of-the-consumption-of-red-meat-and-processed-meat

    Salt is a known carcinogen, as is alcohol.

    Acrylamide is formed when grilling/burning food- and when pickling food – it’s a known carcinogen and a component of cigarette smoke.

    Coffee is a “possible carcinogen”.

    Banning Aspartame because of a possible link to cancer surely sets a precendent where we should ban much more common foods which have much higher links to cancer.

  14. What a waste of time and demonstration of ignorance.

    > This category is used when there is limited evidence of carcinogenicity in humans and less than sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity in experimental animals.

    Here’s the experiment in animals:

    > the average APM daily intake in the general population has been shown to range from 2 to 3 mg/kg body weight (bw)

    Key takeaways is that they observed carcinogenic effects when rats were taking in 20mg per kg of body weight, but at doses close to what humans consume the carcinogenic effects are not statistically significant.

    It’s an interesting study.

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1392232/

    We should ban processed meat first then, that one is on a higher category of risk in the who, it’s called “carcinogenic to humans” (group I). Red meat is called “probably carcinogenic” (group 2A). Aspartame is on an even lower category than red meat, “possibly carcinogenic” (2B)

    The difference between 2A and 2B is that in 2A there is sufficient evidence of cancer in animals whereas for 2B the evidence is less than sufficient (even lower category of evidence than limited evidence)

  16. Hell yeah no more aspartame! All hail our processed sugars overlords which’re absolutely healthy! ^^/s

  17. This aspartame witch hunt is ridiculous. You need to drink gallons of cola zero every day to get the same conditions as the rats in the experiment which developed cancer.

  18. There’s about 30mg of aspartame per dL of Pepsi Max.

    For 40mg/kg max daily allowance for average person of 80kg (3.2g aspartame) that translates into…

    10.6 liters of Pepsi Max.

    Every single day.

    So, even a major veteran heavy user who chugs several liters a day will only reach a faction of that max allowance.

    To cause said issues like liver cancer, the aspartame should be easily provable as a human carcinogen, because the average amount these people consumed it in those studies borderlined milligrams, not grams per day. We’re talking almost about dioxin level dangerous and heavy exposure to lab rats would yield cancer beyond doubt.

    For comparison, a single can of basic piss beer contains about 15 000 milligrams of ethanol, which has been classified as a strong human carcinogen and literally everyone drinks like there’s no tomorrow with even daily allowance of a few cans per day included in most countries’ nutritional standards. Alcoholics routinely down a dozen per day (be it beer, wine, booze or wiper fluid) for several decades non-stop and even then, things like liver cancer aren’t the leading cause of death, but ordinary cirrhosis and stuff. Or tobacco – people puff that stuff by the pack for decades, which is proven beyond doubt to be a very strong carcinogen with 4000% relative cancer risk, yet only half of all lung cancers are tobacco-borne.

    Yes, I stress about this myself every now and then because I’m a heavy consumer. All my drinks in essence are either sweetened sodas or energy drinks or mineral water. I’ve tried to go without, but after not seeing any difference in my well-being in ½year experiment(physical, mental, bloods, tooth decay, appetite, etc – actually my cravings for sweet stuff and thus consumption increased during that time), I just returned for convenience.

    Risk that the average consumer moves to sugar-sweetened drinks instead is high. The average consumer is lazy and seeking easy fast reward comfort foods, and there is no way they suddenly turned into eating the ideal perfect healthy diet.

  20. No other food ingredient has been studied more and it’s been shown to be harmless unless ingested in massive quantities.

    Want to ban something? Ban HFCS. That’s some nasty shit. Sugar that doesn’t trigger a body response – allowing you to consume and consume without your body knowing you’re taking in all those calories.

  21. Ethanol is carcinogenic too, more potent and studied, should be ban it to.

    /s

  22. I have yet to see a single conclusive study that proves that most of these alternative sugars are worse than normal sugar.

  23. Back off! That stuff is the only reason I’m not chronically dehydrated

  24. This is shockingly American behavior, there is no evidence of it being more dangerous than other common foods

  25. It would be time.
    I methodically avoid anything that has chemical sweeteners.
    I prefer the unhealthiness of sugar over that of chemicals.
    My personal preference is what Arizona Tea is doing with at least their Green tea (at least in the EU), where the sugar has been drastically reduced and compensated with Stevia, and some pears juice has been added presumably to avoid using too much Stevia which alters the taste.

Comments are closed.