The artificial sweetener aspartame has been shown to cause cancer in lab rats, and should be banned for human consumption, warns the Cancer Prevention Coalition.
Under the explicit provisions of the 1958 Delaney Law, which requires an automatic ban on carcinogenic food additives, the Coalition is calling on Dr. Margaret Hamburg, the newly appointed Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and public health advocate, to promptly ban the continued use of aspartame.
First discovered in 1965 by the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle, aspartame is an artificial sweetener marketed by Ajinomoto Sweeteners under trademark names including Nutrasweet, Equal and Canderel.
Aspartame is the second most widely used artificial sweetener in the world. It is found in more than 6,000 products including carbonated and powdered soft drinks, hot chocolate, chewing gum, candy, desserts, yogurt, and tabletop sweeteners, as well as some pharmaceutical products like vitamins and sugar-free cough drops. More than 200 million people worldwide consume it.
The sweetener has been used for more than 30 years, having first been approved by the FDA in 1974.
After saccharin, aspartame is the commonest sweetener, consumed by over 200 million people worldwide, and represents about 60% of the artificial sweetener market.
