How much aspartame do people actually consume?

When determining how much of an ingredient is safe to consume, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) uses the concept of an Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI). The ADI is a very conservative estimate of the amount of a sweetener that can safely be consumed on a daily basis over a person's lifetime.

The ADI for aspartame was set at 50 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg) of a person's body weight. This is the sweetness equivalence of consumption of about one and a half pounds of sugar per day by an adult!

The chart below shows the approximate number of servings of various products containing aspartame that people would have to consume every day to reach the ADI.

Product	# of servingsfor a 150 lb adult	# of servingsfor a 50 lb child
12-oz. cans of beverage OR	20	7
8-oz. servings of powered soft drink OR	34	11
4-oz. servings of gelatin dessertOR	42	14
Packets of tabletop sweetener	97	32

The amount of aspartame that Americans actually consume has been carefully monitored through dietary surveys over many years. Adults with high-level intakes of aspartame consume only about 6% of the ADI.

Among children between the ages of 2 and 5, aspartame intake among high-level consumers is only about 10% of the ADI. (Because of their small size, children consume proportionately larger amounts of all food ingredients than adults in relation to their body weight.)

Since the ADI has a built-in safety factor and represents a guideline for use every day over a lifetime, occasional use of aspartame above the ADI does not pose a safety concern. Tests with humans given much greater amounts of aspartame than the ADI have shown no adverse health effects.