A sweetener commonly found in diet drinks and chewing gum has been added to the World Health Organisation's list of possible carcinogens - but you may not have to kick your Diet Coke habit just yet.
The scale does not say how much exposure you need to raise your cancer risk - it just identifies the substances as hazards.
"So, for example, processed meat and smoking are both carcinogens but smoking causes about 54,000 cases of cancer in the UK each year whereas processed meat only causes about 5,400."This is where another arm of the WHO comes in, the Joint WHO and Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Expert Committee on Food Additives - JECFA for short.
A can of diet drink typically contains about 200mg of aspartame. So a 70kg adult could drink 14 cans without going over the safe daily limit for aspartame.Cancer is a disease of the cells, and a carcinogen is something that disrupts the way cells work. "The most important thing really you can do to reduce your risk of cancer is to not smoke, to keep a healthy weight, have a healthy balanced diet, cut down alcohol and stay physically active."
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