[beloch]

" among the groups that received a high-fat diet, the mice that drank the sweetener solution became considerably heavier than those who drank plain water. However, the blood sugar level was higher than normal in all of the mice that received sweetener solution. "

In mice, at least, it seems that the artificial sweetener helped them accumulate more fat than mice who were given water and the same diet. So, aspartame may act like an obesogen[1] in mice.

If you think this is hard to believe and that calories in are calories in, consider diabetics. If untreated, they excrete sugars to the point where they have difficulty maintaining weight on a diet that would make somebody else quite fat. The body's chemistry is complex and, as far as I can tell, not well understood at all, especially when it comes to diet. There seems to be a lot more funding available to develop drugs and procedures to treat illness than there is to optimize (relatively) healthy peoples' diets.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesogen

[logicallee]

I still didn't click through but you do not suggest a title. Can you summarize in a neutral way? Maybe "on a high-fat diet, artificial sweeteners may exacerbate weight gain?" Is that fair?

[logicallee]

While I was downvoted, 12 hours later Reddit managed to post a much more accurate title (which made its front page). This is Reddit's title:

>Low-calorie sweetener use is independently associated with heavier relative weight, larger waist, and higher prevalence and incidence of abdominal obesity, suggesting that low-calorie sweetener use may not be an effective means of weight control, based on a study of 1,454 participants over 10 years.

This makes total sense to me. It is not fair to summarize this as "prevents weight loss."