Diet Pepsi listened to its customers and ditched the chemical aspartame

Yesterday, Pepsi announced that it would be removing the chemical aspartame from Diet Pepsi and replacing the artificial sweetener with sucralose starting this August. The reason? There have been rumors floating around for some time now that aspartame is a cancer-causing chemical, and those rumors have been hurting diet soda sales.

The problem with these rumors is that they really are just are rumors.

As Vox reports, the National Cancer Institute has found that artificial sweeteners don’t appear to cause cancer. Meanwhile, The European Food Safety Authority recently completed a thorough investigation of aspartame and found that the chemical does not appear to cause damage to the brain, nervous system, or genes, and does not appear to cause cancer.

So this move on Pepsi’s part really seems to be a lot more about public perception than public safety. While we know that it sounds great, getting a scary-sounding chemical removed from a soda, what we would really love to see is all those ACTUALLY scary chemicals removed from our grocery market’s food aisles.

Image via