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It's one of the most tested substances just because of all the urban legends. There are plenty of tests with actual humans. The results were all identical to placebo. The last study I saw was testing for headaches. There was actually a slightly higher instance of headaches in the placebo group. Nothing of statistical significance though.

In trials I performed on myself, where I have averaged about 10 cans a week for the past 13 years, plus additional quantities above that any time I went out to eat and didn't get tea. Not to mention any foods that have it in there. It was probably bad when I was on a jello kick. My studies are ongoing, but so far there has been nothing.

What I find most amusing, is that long term heavy sugar consumption actually causes many of the things people try to pin on aspartame.

There are plenty of short-term tests - short term it's fine. And the FDA is fine at noticing when something immediately does harm, but I'm not the least bit confident in the FDA's analysis of long term risks right now.

How about all the other groups that have researched it, The American Cancer Society, etc?

It's been in use for about 30 years. There have been no confirmed problems in all that time. You don't even have anything to base a hypothesis on. There was no data to indicate it was harmful at all. The only reason it was tested at all is because we test everything that is going to be in food.

It didn't take this long to discover trans fats were bad. There was tons of evidence with that. If this was a problem we should have similar data. Especially considering the fact that it has been under much greater scrutiny.

Well I think I mentioned previously in this thread already that I'm pretty confident they're not carcinogenic, so that's not the question.

However I do hypothesize that they're likely to cause eating issues though. I just see far too often people start guzzling a diet soda and then go grab a bag of chips. It goes together like booze and cigarettes for smokers.

I suppose it is possible that could affect some people that way. However there is no evidence that this is a causal relationship.

A lot of fat people, will try to lose weight by switching to diet, but they still continue their other poor eating habits. So that may also account for.

Then you have to consider that people drinking diet, may be eating an excessive amount of things with sugar alcohols. If you eat enough of that it can affect your blood sugar a little and possibly increase appetite.

So yea, I would agree that aspartame affecting certain people's eating habits is a legitimate hypothesis based on observational evidence. By eliminating sugar alcohols, and having psychologists on hand, you may be able to isolate the variables. It could be made into a proper experiment if done in that manner.

Yep - I suggested such an experiment in some other thread where a guy was asking about a grad student project to do.

Yes, that would be a good project. There is a lot of interest in aspartame due to all the urban legends. So it would get a lot of attention. Especially if he conducted a good conclusive experiment that was peer reviewed.

I was rather skeptical because of all the nonsense out there regarding the topic. However you made a good convincing logical argument that proved it's validity as a hypothesis because of the observational evidence.

Funny as I am sure that I read that artificial sweeteners certainly used to contain something carciogenic, but pretty sure that the producers have found a less harmful ingredient now.

Going back to the tea, not all green tea is equal. With a good green tea you do not need to add anything to make it sickly sweet. Green tea tastes good, if you buy a good one. And good is not always expensive, just not tea bags!

There has been a lot of research on tea over the last decade, a review of it here: http://www.motleyhealth.com/diets_and_r ... eight-loss

Sickly sweet? Seriously? Green tea isn't naturally sweet in my experience.

Ironically, you can sometimes get very good green tea very cheap. The "Kirkland Signature" green tea at Costco is actually imported by Ito-En, a Japanese tea company with a reputation for high quality tea. I drink that at work at my Japanese-owned school. It's as good as higher-cost bagged sencha but much cheaper per serving.