Obesity rates start dramatically rising around the time aspartame came to market in 1993. CDC's data isn't very granular[0], but there is a slight upward trend

Obesity rates start dramatically rising around the time aspartame came to market in 1993. CDC's data isn't very granular[0], but there is a slight upward trend until 1976-1980, the next data point 1986-1994 is significantly higher and continues to rise at a much higher rate. Obviously correlation, but obesity is a contributing factor to a significant number of diseases and health issues. There's a Quora answer that suggests aspartame was banned in France in 2015, but aspartame searches are so astroturfed on Google that I can't find anything that confirms that. There also doesn't seem to be any obvious obesity studies with data from France after 2010, if that's true. At least one study suggests artificial sweeteners break satiation leading to increased consumption[1]. Aspartame may not be directly toxic, but there seems to be increasing evidence that it negatively affects dietary habits of some portion of the population, and that it does not contribute to weight reduction in human consumers[2]. 0 - https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity-adult-17-18/obesity-adult.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity-adult-17-18/obe... 1 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/ 2 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7817779/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7817779/