Ingredients in our food are as ubiquitous as they are nebulous. In our PrimaFoodie Ingredient Spotlights, we investigate common food additives to discover their origin, use, and purpose— because even if something is edible, it doesn't mean it's healthy or necessary.

What Is Aspartame?

Of all food sweeteners, aspartame has been one of the most widely used for decades. It's a low-calorie—technically near-zero-calorie—artificial sweetener created by combining the amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine with methanol. The result is a sweetener nearly 200 times sweeter than cane sugar.

American chemist James M. Schlatter created aspartame in the mid-1960s to replace sucralose, a then-common table sugar replacement. Food manufacturers started incorporating aspartame in their products in the mid-1970s when the sweetener received FDA approval. Equal® became the most common aspartame tabletop sweetener brand, launched in the early 1980s.

What's the Purpose of Aspartame?

Aspartame is found in foods, candies, beverages, supplements, medicines, and tabletop sweetener packets. Its original purpose was to offer a low- to no-calorie replacement for sugar and a substance that some experts in the medical and scientific fields believed could provide a better sweetener option to people with certain conditions. "Being 180–200 times sweeter than sucrose, its intake was expected to reduce obesity rates in developing countries and help those struggling with diabetes," as a study published in the journal Nutrients states.

Aspartame is incorporated into thousands of edible products. The most common include:
diet sodas

juices labeled "low calorie"
sports drinks and flavored waters
chewing gum
medicines, most commonly those made for children
vitamins and supplements, including electrolyte powders
sugar-free desserts and snacks
condiments
sauces
syrups
mixed with other artificial sweeteners

Aspartame is also present in toothpaste, mouthwash, and other personal care products.

Is Aspartame Bad?

The research on aspartame and human health is wide-reaching and contradictory. In July 2023, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), World Health Organization, and Food and Agriculture Organization released information citing that aspartame could have a potential carcinogenic impact on humans. The IARC review was prompted by previous research that reignited concern about the possible health effects of aspartame. One of those studies was the NutriNet-Santé cohort study that involved 100,000 people in France. It found that people who consumed higher amounts of aspartame were slightly more likely to develop breast cancer and overall cancer compared with people who did not consume the sweetener.

In other instances, consumers over the last three decades have complained that aspartame has caused memory loss, headaches, dizziness, weight gain, and even epileptic seizures. In 2017, researchers linked artificial sweeteners to obesity, stating “data in both animal models and humans suggest that the effects of artificial sweeteners may contribute to metabolic syndrome and the obesity epidemic.”

On the other hand, some studies have shown aspartame to be harmless and the FDA says that its scientists "do not have safety concerns when aspartame is used under the approved conditions."

Our PrimaFoodie Take on Aspartame

When it comes to aspartame and any chemical ingredient, we consider the following: Where does this ingredient come from? Was it plucked from nature, or was it made in a lab? Is it necessary? What is the research behind it? And why do manufacturers use it?

Aspartame has no nutritional value; its job is only to make us eat more processed foods. It is unnaturally sweet, artificial, and linked to too many potential health issues. It's a product made up in a lab by a chemist to mimic a natural taste and make foods addictive.

Aspartame is one of a handful of manufactured ingredients that loudly illustrate how our food system has shifted away from human health and toward profit. This artificial sweetener concerns us, as does the research linking it to even the possibility of it being carcinogenic.

For these reasons, all of us at PrimaFoodie steer clear of aspartame.