Originally Posted by WarChild

A little aspartame won't kill you. I laugh at the jackasses that won't touch aspartame but pump their bodies full of taurine and sugar instead.

Personally I use Splenda as an artificial sweetner. For me it works just fine and I'm so used to it it tastes just fine. I don't use a whole lot, a packet a day in my coffee. Like anything, moderation is the key.

Artificial sweetners get a bad rep in general and for the most part it's not deserved. People often refer to something they call "aspartame obesity" and then use it as some sort of defacto proof that these "evil chemicals" are actually causing people to get fat.

Most often, it turns out, it's people that are swilling huge volumes of diet sodas and other sweet treats.

If you know anything about bio chemistry, you know the most anabolic substance in the body is not tesosterone but rather it is insulin. Insulin inhibits the burning of fat but promotes the growth of muscle. This is why you always have a simple carb, before or with your proten, immediately following a workout. It causes your blood sugar to spike forcing your body to produce an insulin reaction. Because your blood is already glycogen depleted, none of that sugar will be converted to fat and the insulin response will have an anabolic, or growth effect.

Blood sugar and insulin are relevant because in a large percentage of the population (I think it's as high as 20%) artificial sweetners can trigger an insulin reaction in the same way sugar does. So if you're already overweight without an active lifestyle and you simply switch to diet soda but chug it like you used to regular soda, yes you are not going to lose any weight at all. You're most probably still consuming excess calories and the frequent insulin responses, if you happen to fall within the population that responds to artificial sweetner with insulin responses, will keep the body from burning any stored fat.

Personally, I'd be far more worried about Fructose. The calories from Fructose can not be burned by any cell other than the liver. In fact, your body processes precisely in the same way it processes the poison ethanol (Alcohol).

Now you know.