Since there are always questions here and there on Aspartame, I wanted to post the following that I pulled from one of the nutrition science guides I read. I was actually looking through this to find some additional data for a client I have with rare food allergies, but I think it's good to have here as well:
The artificial sweetener aspartame (Nutrasweet, Equal) caused lymphomas (cancers of the lymph system) and leukemias (cancers of the blood-forming cells) in female--but not male--rats, according to a large Italian study.
The lowest level that increased risk was close to what many people consume in foods--equal to about eight cans of aspartame-sweetened diet soda a day for adults and two cans a day for children.
What's more, brain tumors occured in 12 of the 1,500 animals fed aspartame but in none of the 300 animals in the aspartame-free group--a difference not statistically significant but troubling enough.
However, lung cancer is the only cancer in women that has soared since aspartame hit the market in the early 1980s. That suggests that aspartame might not affect humans as much as it did the lab animals--though it's possible that it might simply take longer for the cancers to occur in humans.