Diet Pepsi will no longer contain the sweetener aspartame, conceding the argument over the controversial additive as the company makes a desperate bid to bring back soda drinkers.
Pepsico will switch to another sweetener for Diet Pepsi’s U.S. brands starting in August, moving from aspartame to a blend of sucralose and acesulfame potassium.
The second largest U.S. soda retailer appears to have relented in a long battle over perceptions of aspartame.
“Increasingly, U.S. diet cola drinkers have been asking us for a great tasting Diet Pepsi without aspartame,” the company said Friday. “We’ve worked hard perfecting an aspartame-free, zero-calorie diet cola to address this need.”
Aspartame is used in a myriad of diet drinks marketed by Pepsi and its rival Coca-Cola, which said Friday it won’t change its sweetener.
However, consumers have reacted negatively to it in recent years due to potential safety concerns, according to the trade publication Beverage Digest, which first broke the news on Friday.
“Several executives have said aspartame has gotten badly dinged in recent years on social media, and that has contributed to concerns by some consumers about the sweetener and about diet [sodas],” Beverage Digest said in its latest issue.
Consumers have been losing their taste for diet sodas over the past few years.
In 2014, Diet Pepsi sales were down nearly 2 percent and Diet Coke sales by nearly 7 percent compared to the year before, according to an analysis from Beverage Digest.
The industry has had to compete with flavored waters, teas and other options generally believed to be healthier.
Aspartame has been around for decades and was put in Diet Pepsi in 1983.
Concerns over aspartame have dogged the artificial sweetener, as it has been linked to increased cancer risk. However, experts and regulators say there isn’t any scientific evidence confirming such a link.
An independent study that examined aspartame use did not find any evidence of adverse health responses to the sweetener. The study, published last month in the journal PLOS ONE, analyzed 48 individuals who reported they were sensitive to aspartame and 48 who weren’t.
A 2009 report from a European Union panel also found there is no evidence that aspartame leads to cancer.
The Food and Drug Administration reached the same conclusion back in 2007, citing six previous studies that did not find a definitive link between cancer and aspartame.
The agency also noted last year that no new evidence has cropped up that would cause it to rethink its position. FDA said it has kept an eye on aspartame since its creation.
Some health advocates applauded Pepsi’s decision.
“Three top-quality studies have found that aspartame causes cancer in animals, so the less that people consume the better,” according to the patient advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest. The group also objects to Diet Pepsi’s new ingredient acesulfame potassium, saying the sweetener may also pose a cancer risk.
