It uncovered eight WHO panelists involved with assessing safe levels of aspartame consumption who are beverage industry consultants who currently or previously worked with the alleged Coke front group, International Life Sciences Institute (Ilsi).
Their involvement in developing intake guidelines represents “an obvious conflict of interest”, said Gary Ruskin, US Right-To-Know’s executive director. “Because of this conflict of interest, [the daily intake] conclusions about aspartame are not credible, and the public should not rely on them,” he added.
I can’t remember it was years ago, but I got this from Mayo Clinic website today:
“A popular artificial sweetener that’s widely found in sugar-free foods and beverages is being labeled as a possible cancer risk by the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO’s cancer research agency, International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), determined aspartame to be a possible carcinogen after reviewing and assessing the potential carcinogenic effect of the sweetener, but says it’s safe to consume in limited amounts.”
So the WHO is saying it could cause cancer so drink it in limited amounts. So there may well be some issues with it. Definitely don’t be drinking 5 or more diet sodas a day that’s for sure.
I don’t know why they don’t use something like sorbitol instead. It doesn’t have these issues and I never have any side effect from it whereas the few times I drank aspartame my body rejected it and kept sending it back to my tongue for me to scrape off, until all of it was out of my system.
No other food had ever done that to me.
IARC has been long since discredited at this point. You want to talk corruption, their panel to determine carcinogenicity was found to have been using a lawyer as the primary consultant who was working with various anti-science groups and he has been actively pushing to get certain things labeled as carcinogenic, despite the scientific evidence to the contrary.
A separate WHO group, JECFA, which is actually about determining human health and safety in relation to specific chemicals (which is not IARC’s job) has repeatedly produced opposing results to IARC. And that includes on their recent claims about aspartame.
Ok, so the WHO are using dubious sources?
The WHO isn’t really a combined organization. It’s a diffuse set of disparate groups, panels, and NGOs. So they don’t really have control over what any particular branch is doing.
IARC has been arguing that it’s been doing its job under its defined parameters and I suppose they are. The problem is that, under their defined parameters, practically every single thing they investigate will be labeled as carcinogenic because everything is carcinogenic at a high enough dosage. Including being alive in the first place.
So I suppose the issue is more the media putting any stock or importance into IARC’s announcements, when they aren’t really saying anything meaningful about human health.