No Danger of Aspartame Use

Listen to a lot of people out there and you will quickly become afraid of aspartame. Aspartame leads to cancer, brain tumors, multiple sclerosis and a whole array of other horrendous diseases and conditions, they say. Aspartame is a poison that anti-aspartame activists believe should be completely eradicated.

In 2005 one of the most important studies making these claims was completed by the European Ramazzini Foundation (ERF) in Bologna, Italy. They claimed that their long-running study they claim proves that aspartame use leads to an increase in cancer. This of course runs completely counter to what the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been saying since it first approved aspartame back in 1981 that aspartame is completely safe for consumption. This study has, for many, proved to be the final nail in the coffin showing that aspartame is dangerous.

The FDA wanted to properly study this report done by the ERF, and asked to view the data used in the study in order to examine it for themselves. The ERF, however, would not give them all of the data, thus making it impossible for the FDA perform a full examination of the results garnered in the ERF study. However, from the data that the FDA was able to look at they have found the study to be highly flawed and cannot support its conclusion that aspartame is a carcinogen. One has to wonder why, if the study was done properly and its results are so conclusive the ERF wouldn't just give the FDA all of its data but, oh well.

Many tests were performed on aspartame before it was approved by the FDA for public consumption back in 1981. The sweetener had first been developed all the way back in 1965, and it had to go through a number of rigorous tests before the FDA would approve it, including one test where rats were given 100 times the amount of aspartame that a normal person would ingest. There was absolutely no increase of cancer in the rats after taking this much aspartame, yet still claims are made that aspartame leads to cancer, as well as there being many other aspartame side effects.