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Aspartame

A sweetener in diet drinks and sugar-free foods.

In the body: The limit rests on long animal studies, with a hundredfold safety margin on top; EFSA’s 2013 review found no reason to change it.

The one rated food, Diet cola, needs no cap on how often you eat it: no amount anyone really eats reaches the daily limit.

Builds up over time. Agencies set an amount you can take in every week, or every day, for life. A food measured against it shows the grams that reach it.

See also: Aspartame and phenylketonuria (PKU)

All hazards

The limit

  • The agency’s figure40 mg/kg body weight/day
  • For a 70 kg adult2,800 mg a day
  • Basisacceptable daily intake (ADI): what you can take in every day for life
    acceptable daily intake (ADI): EFSA 2013 (no reason to revise the SCF/JECFA ADI), JECFA 2023 reaffirmed, Health Canada 40 (acceptable daily intake (ADI) from chronic toxicity in animals (no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) 4000 mg/kg body weight/day))
  • Average adult intake EFSA 2013: conservative general-population exposure estimates up to 36 mg/kg body weight/day at the 95th percentile (below the acceptable daily intake (ADI)). IARC 2B (2023) is classification only.
  • Source EFSA 2013

Reviewed foods that carry it

1 reviewed food carries it, 1 of them rated by dose.

Grams to the limit

Grams of each food that reach the limit in its window, for a 70 kg adult. Fewest first: those are the foods to watch.

  1. Diet cola

    Nothing to watch: under the limit for a 375 g serving

    More than anyone eats
    No realistic amount reaches the limit.
    119.2 mg per 375 g serving

    Castellanos 2025 · grade B

    How it’s rated

    The counted figure is 8,800 g a day, about 23 servings a day.

    No cap: the acceptable daily intake for aspartame is 40 mg/kg body weight/day (EFSA, JECFA and Health Canada), 2,800 mg a day for 70 kg. Eaten alone, about 8,819 g a day would reach it (about 23 servings; 5,132 g at the strongest product, 546.2 mg/L). One serving carries 119 mg, 4.3% of it. EFSA puts general-population exposure at up to 36 mg/kg body weight/day at the 95th percentile, below the limit. IARC (2023) classed aspartame Group 2B, possibly carcinogenic on limited evidence; that is a classification, not a dose limit.

    Intake: one 375 mL reference amount (375.4 g at 1.00101 g/mL) a day, 70 kg adult · Level in the food: 317.8 mg/L (diet cola, 1.00101 g/mL) (mean of 3 products' lot means (546.2, 99.9, 307.3 mg/L; standard deviation of lots 4.6-23.0; 4 lots each), n = 3)

    Measured on: Castellanos and Sanchez 2025, J Xenobiot 15(5):164, Table 3: three commercial cola sodas labelled 'zero' or 'light' with no sugars added, bought in Spain (2024), four independent lots each, HPLC with UV/fluorescence detection; mean of the three products' lot means

Sources