MP says sweetner is ‘unsafe’. Calls for ban

A recent Italian study has linked the sweetner aspartame with cancer in rats. The European Ramazzini Foundation showed that moderate regular consumption of the artifical sweetner caused a repeated incidence in malignant tumours.

“[it] should have sent alarm bells ringing in health departments around the world” said Liberal Democrat MP Roger Williams.

Mr Williams, the MP for Brecon and Radnorshire and a Cambridge science graduate, said he had been looking into the safety of aspartame for more than a year. At first he had been unconvinced by the “internet conspiracy theories” but he said what he had found had “truly horrified” him.

Sound science and proper regulatory and political independence had been notable by their absence from the approval of aspartame, he said. In addition to Mr Rumsfeld being instrumental in securing aspartame’s approval, with the support of the then newly elected president Ronald Reagan, there had been numerous examples of decision makers who were worried about aspartame’s safety being discredited or being removed from their positions. Industry sympathisers had been appointed to replace them and were in turn recompensed with lucrative jobs working for the sweetener industry.

Full story at The Guardian