Lifestyle Sports: Latest from Food Politics: Industry-influenced studies of the week: artificial sweeteners

By Marion Nestle

January 19 2026

Industry-influenced studies of the week: artificial sweeteners

The new Dietary Guidelines have advised against consuming non-nutritive sweeteners despite research testifying to their harmlessness. Much such research is funded by groups representing makers of artificial sweeteners, as these two examples show.

Study #1: A Systematic Review of Nonsugar Sweeteners and Cancer Epidemiology Studies Adv Nutr. 2025 Dec;16(12):100527. doi: 10.1016/j.advnut.2025.100527.

Method: review of epidemiology studies of NSS intake and the risks of all types of cancer.

Results: Overall, the epidemiology evidence does not support associations between any NSS and any cancer type.

Conflict of interest: All authors are employed by Gradient, Geosyntec, or the American Beverage Association (ABA). Gradient and Geosyntec are environmental and risk sciences consulting firms. ABA is the trade association that represents America’s non-alcoholic beverage industry.

Funding: ABA provided funding for this paper, which was written during the authors’ normal course of employment. This paper represents the professional opinions of the authors and not those of ABA.

Study #2: Lack of Genotoxic and Carcinogenic Potential for Nonsugar Sweeteners: A Review of Animal and Mechanistic Evidence. Adv Nutr. 2025 Dec;16(12):100552. doi: 10.1016/j.advnut.2025.100552. Epub 2025 Nov 4.

Method: review of the available experimental evidence.

Results: high-quality studies have not shown evidence for carcinogenicity in animal models, except for saccharin, which causes bladder tumors in rats via a mechanism not relevant to humans.

Conclusions: The results of this evaluation are consistent with the results of epidemiology studies, which have shown no consistent associations between NSS intake and cancer risk. Taken together, the body of available evidence supports previous conclusions by authoritative and regulatory bodies that Ace-K, advantame, aspartame, cyclamate, neotame, saccharin, steviol glycosides, and sucralose do not pose a genotoxic or carcinogenic risk to humans.

Conflict of interest: All authors are employed by Gradient or the American Beverage Association (ABA). Gradient is an environmental and risk sciences consulting firm. ABA is the trade association that represents America’s nonalcoholic beverage industry. This paper represents the professional opinions of the authors and not those of ABA.

Comment

These are two studies paid for by the American Beverage Association and conducted by paid consultants or employees to produce research favorable to the use of artificial sweeteners, which these studies did.

Research on artificial sweeteners is especially difficult to do because the amounts consumed are so small relative to other dietary components. In general, independently funded research tends to find more problems associated with use of non-nutritive sweeteners than does industry-funded research. This is an example of the “funding effect,” the by this time well documented influence of sponsorship on research outcome.

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