Ok I’ll be that guy. The study says there’s no risk unless you drink equivalent of 70 cokes per day. So I think I’m ok. Barely.
>“Back in 1981 they established an acceptable daily intake of aspartame, of 40 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day. To consume over that limit would require a very large daily consumption of Diet Coke or similar drinks. On 14 July, Jecfa may change that risk assessment, or they may not.”
Emphasis mine. I'd be curious to see if this understanding has shifted in the past 42 years.
Let's suppose a chemical causes slow damage to the body, maybe greatly increasing your risk of cancer or alzheimers if you drink a can of diet soda per day. How could we possibly know if it is safe?
We often test chemicals on rats, but the problem is that they only live a few years. No one wants to wait 20+ years to see the results of an expensive study on longer lived mammals anyway.
The solution is we feed the rats excessive amounts of the chemical and see if it causes problems. This isn't a great way to do it, but what other option would you suggest?
The same way we know cigarettes are unsafe. You look at human cohort data and run variable adjustment models on it and control for confounders. How do cigarette smokers or diet soda drinkers do over time, especially in older cohorts? Are there any other products out there with aspartame that we can look at as well until we've isolated a risk model for aspartame by itself?