The most obvious substitute for aspartame is sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. In liquid form, and the quantities that people drink soda, the health risks are

The most obvious substitute for aspartame is sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. In liquid form, and the quantities that people drink soda, the health risks are immense. Cardiovascular decease kills a comparable amount of people as cancer overall, from all sources. For aspartame to end up a net negative, it’d have to be massively carcinogenic. Certainly its better to replace Diet Coke with water, all else equal, but the effort in changing habits is much higher. There is a ton of preventable decease due to bad diet and lack of exercise, despite well known causes. So why is that? Health discussions have this psychological bias where people think “be more like me” is effective (don’t do drugs, just go out and meet people, exercise more, just stop smoking). The fact that people think like this, despite the war on drugs disaster, is madness. Especially when the solution is so simple: throw the moralism away and focus solely on harm reduction – also known as “whatever works”. Just good old empiricism.