APRIL 24, 2015
PepsiCo Inc. will start selling Diet Pepsi without aspartame
later this year, one of the biggest changes to the beverage in decades, after a
consumer backlash against the artificial sweetener crushed sales.
The company will replace aspartame with a blend of sucralose
and acesulfame potassium in Diet Pepsi, Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi and Wild Cherry
Diet Pepsi sold in the U.S. beginning in August. The move follows a 5.2 percent
decline in Diet Pepsi’s sales volume last year, according to Beverage-Digest.
Sales of Coca-Cola’s Diet Coke, which also uses aspartame, dropped 6.6 percent.
PepsiCo is getting the jump on Diet Coke, the country’s No.
1 sugar-free soda, in removing the controversial sweetener. Consumers have been
backing away from both brands in recent years, fearful that the lab-created
sweetener may cause cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said there’s
no proof of a health risk from aspartame.
“Decades of studies have shown that aspartame is safe, but
the reality is that consumer demand in the U.S. has been evolving,” Seth
Kaufman, senior vice president of Pepsi and the company’s flavors drinks in North
America, said in an interview. “The U.S. diet cola consumer has been asking and
asking and asking for an aspartame-free great diet cola.”
Coke’s Response
Even so, Coca-Cola isn’t budging.
“There are currently no plans to change the sweetener for
Diet Coke, America’s favorite no-calorie soft drink,” Scott Williamson, a
spokesman, said in an e-mail. “All of the beverages we offer and ingredients we
use are safe.”
PepsiCo’s decision came after consumer complaints
accelerated during the past two years -- with feedback flowing in through call
lines, social media and letters, Kaufman said. In surveys, aspartame was the
top reason given by consumers for drinking less of the diet cola, he said.
“It’s been going on
for some time, and the volume of it over the past two years has really been
high,” Kaufman said.
PepsiCo, based in Purchase, New York, doesn’t have plans to
replace aspartame in Diet Mountain Dew, despite a 3 percent sales decline. That
product is the company’s best-selling diet beverage after Diet Pepsi.
There are no plans to remove aspartame from other PepsiCo
soft drinks either, Kaufman said. The focus for the change is on colas with
declining sales. With aspartame-sweetened Pepsi Max, for example, consumers
didn’t cite the ingredient as one of the top 10 reasons they were drinking less
of it, Kaufman said.
FDA Approval
The FDA approved aspartame for use in some beverages and
foods in 1981. Two years later, the ingredient was allowed in carbonated
beverages. It was then ruled a “general-purpose sweetener” in 1996, giving it
freer rein.
“Aspartame is one of the most exhaustively studied substances
in the human food supply, with more than 100 studies supporting its safety,”
the agency said. “FDA scientists have reviewed scientific data regarding the
safety of aspartame in food and concluded that it is safe for the general
population under certain conditions.”
People with a rare hereditary disease that makes it hard for
them to metabolize aspartame’s phenylalanine are advised to limit its
ingestion, the FDA warns. The agency requires labeling to inform people who are
at risk.
Acesulfame potassium, meanwhile, was first approved for food
in 1988 and is used in drinks such as Coke Zero, which also contains some
aspartame.
Sucralose, marketed as Splenda and used in a version of Diet Coke,
was first approved in 1998. The FDA has deemed both sweeteners safe.
Defending Aspartame
Coca-Cola, based in Atlanta, took a shot at the aspartame
revolt in mid-2013 with print ads in national publications that defended its
safety. Sales of Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi both declined almost 7 percent that
year.
The crisis, which came on top of a consumer reaction against
high-calorie sugar-sweetened drinks, has forced Coca-Cola and PepsiCo into the
lab for solutions. Both have aggressively pursued a natural, noncaloric
ingredient called stevia, which is extracted from a leaf and is 200 to 300
times sweeter than sugar.
Stevia doesn’t work so well in colas, however. It gives off
a metallic aftertaste when used in higher doses. So the soda makers are
researching ways to ferment and bioengineer copies of a better-tasting stevia
molecule found in the leaf.
As for aspartame, Kaufman declined to say how PepsiCo’s
decision would affect Coca-Cola, saying only that “we’re excited that we’re the
first scaled business to do it.”
Source: Bloomberg.com
