By Mike Esterl
PepsiCo Inc. said Friday it will remove aspartame from Diet
Pepsi in the U.S. and replace it with sucralose, another artificial
sweetener, in a bid to reverse plunging sales.
The beverage company said it is making the move in response to
consumer surveys showing the presence of aspartame to be the No. 1
reason that Americans are scaling back on diet colas.
U.S. consumers are backing away from artificial sweeteners amid
health concerns, even though the Food and Drug Administration says
such sweeteners are completely safe. Aspartame has proved
particularly unpopular with consumers of late.
PepsiCo said it continues to stand behind the safety of
aspartame and will keep using it outside the U.S. But it said it
would start shipping Diet Pepsi without aspartame to U.S. stores in
August.
Diet Pepsi sales fell 5.2% by volume in the U.S. last year,
according to industry tracker Beverage Digest.
Coca-Cola Co.'s U.S. diet soda sales also have fallen sharply
the last two years. U.S. volumes of Diet Coke, the country's
leading diet soda by sales, fell 6.6% last year, according to
Beverage Digest.
Coke Chief Executive Muhtar Kent didn't say in an interview with
CNBC on Friday morning whether the company would also consider
removing aspartame from Diet Coke.
"I'm not here to defend aspartame," Mr. Kent said during the
interview, when asked about PepsiCo's move.
But he added that the European Food Safety Authority recently
came out with a report saying aspartame is one of the most
"researched ingredients in the world and safe."
In a statement Friday, Coke said "there are currently no plans
to change the sweetener" for Diet Coke. "All of the beverages we
offer and ingredients we use are safe," it added.
PepsiCo said it has no plans to remove aspartame from other diet
soda offerings, including Diet Mountain Dew and Pepsi Max, a diet
cola marketed more aggressively to males.
Aspartame "doesn't even hit top 10" among concerns of Pepsi Max
drinkers, Seth Kaufman, senior vice president of Pepsi and flavors
in North America, said in an interview.
Aspartame "remains an important sweetener option for us," he
added.
Some studies starting in the 1970s linked aspartame to cancer.
The FDA, which approved aspartame in 1981, says such studies,
including an Italian one in 2005, were flawed.
But consumer fears over artificial sweeteners, particularly
aspartame, have been amplified by the Internet in recent years.
Some studies have suggested that zero-calorie artificial
sweeteners, not just aspartame, can trip up body mechanisms that
regulate caloric intake. Some have also shown a correlation, but
not established causation, between diet soda and obesity, diabetes
and heart disease.
The American Beverage Association says artificial sweeteners are
among "the most studied and reviewed ingredients" over four
decades, and are safe weight-loss tools, positions that have been
echoed by the American Diabetes Association and the Academy of
Nutrition and Dietetics.
Tripp Mickle contributed to this article.
Write to Mike Esterl at mike.esterl@wsj.com
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