[kibwen]

While I am not trying to shill for artificial sweeteners (drink water, it's good!), this overstates the amount of uncertainty. Many studies have been done on aspartame and have concluded that it is a safe food additive. People have been guzzling aspartame in large quantities for thirty years now; if it had a large-scale effect that was worse than sugar, it would be pretty evident given all the attention that aspartame receives. What my cautious language is intended to couch is that you should not assume that aspartame has no health detriments; some studies have tried to link to aspartame to increased risk of cancer, while others have failed to replicate that result. But even if large-scale consumption of aspartame did lead to increased risk of cancer 30 years later, it would be less dangerous than the risk of diabetes (and its associated comorbidities) from the analogous sugar consumption over that 30 year period.