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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Caroline Davies

Aspartame is safe in limited amounts, say experts after cancer warning

Cans of Diet Coke in a supermarket
Used as an artificial sweetener since the 1980s, aspartame gives a taste 200 times sweeter than sugar for few calories. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

A widely used artificial sweetener deemed a “possible” cause of cancer is safe in limited quantities, such as consuming fewer than nine to 14 cans of soft drink a day, experts have said.

The sugar substitute aspartame, used in thousands of products including diet fizzy drinks, ice-cream and chewing gum, was classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans” in a report released on Thursday by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

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