Diet Coke is reportedly due to be slapped with a cancer warning label after a landmark ruling by the World Health Organisation.
The popular drink contains aspartame, an artificial sweetener found in a host of low-calorie food. According to insiders, a leaked report from the WHO states that aspartame will be labelled as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. The sweetener has been on the market since the 1980s. It is also added to Extra chewing gum, Pepsi MAX and some Snapple drinks.
Diet Coke to be slapped with a carcinogenic warning
Sources reportedly told Reuters that Diet Coke will be labelled as possibly carcinogenic after a report by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer research arm. The ruling by the IARC was finalised earlier this month. External experts assessed whether aspartame was a potential hazard or not.
Possibly carcinogenic to humans.
However, the ruling does not take into account how much of a product a human can safely consume. JECFA (the Joint WHO and Food and Agriculture Organization’s Expert Committee on Food Additives) is also reviewing the risks of aspartame this year. It is reportedly due to publish its findings on the same day as the IARC on July 14.
Since 1981, JEFCA has said that aspartame is safe to consume within daily limits. For example, an adult weighing 60kg – or 132lb – would have to drink between 12 and 26 cans of a diet fizzy drink (depending on the amount of aspartame in the beverage) every day to be at risk. That view has been widely shared by national regulators, including in the United States and Europe.
Industry and regulators ‘fear’ ‘confusing’ rulings
Industry experts and regulators are reportedly fearing that both rulings being held at the same time could be confusing. This is according to letters from US and Japanese regulators allegedly seen by Reuters.
An IARC spokesperson said both the IARC and JECFA committees’ findings were confidential until July. But added they were “complementary”, with IARC’s conclusion representing “the first fundamental step to understand carcinogenicity”. The additives committee “conducts risk assessment, which determines the probability of a specific type of harm (eg cancer) to occur under certain conditions and levels of exposure.”
Nozomi Tomita, an official from Japan’s Ministry of Health wrote a letter to WHO which shared that both should rulings be “coordinated” to avoid “confusion” and “concern” amongst the public. The IARC has also been criticised previously for sparking “needless” alarm over hard-to-avoid sweeteners or substances.
International Sweeteners Association has ‘serious concerns’
Frances Hunt-Wood, the secretary general of the Internation Sweeteners Association (ISA), said: “IARC is not a food safety body and their review of aspartame is not scientifically comprehensive and is based heavily on widely discredited research.” The body’s members include Mars Wrigley, a Coco-Cola unit and Cargill added it has “serious concerns with the IARC review, which may mislead consumers”.
Listing aspartame as a possible carcinogen is intended to motivate more research, said sources close to the IARC. It aims to help agencies, consumers and manufacturers draw firmer conclusions.
Entertainment Daily has contacted representatives for Coca-Cola for comment.
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