Despite Aspartame Warning, Beverage Companies Likely to Stick With It

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About eight years ago, in response to customer concerns about possible health risks associated with the artificial sweetener aspartame, PepsiCo decided to remove the ingredient from its popular diet soda. Sales flopped. A year later, aspartame was back in Diet Pepsi. Today, the top three ingredients listed in the tiny print on the backs of cans and bottles of Diet Pepsi — and on its competitor Diet Coke — are water, caramel color and aspartame. A trip through the grocery store reveals the ingredient on the labels of not only diet sodas but also diet teas, sugar-free gums, sugar-free energy drinks and diet lemonade drink mix. By some estimates, thousands of products contain aspartame. The use of aspartame, which is often known by the brand name Equal, in food and beverage products has long been scrutinized. The latest iteration came on Thursday, when an agency of the World Health Organization declared that aspartame could possibly cause cancer and encouraged people who consume a significant number of beverages with aspartame to switch to water or other unsweetened drinks.