I will take the other side of that bet. I've joked for years about aspartame surely going to give me cancer and yet despite the not inconsiderable amount of res

I will take the other side of that bet. I've joked for years about aspartame surely going to give me cancer and yet despite the not inconsiderable amount of research into it trying to find a smoking gun the results are at best vaguely suggestive, which is another way of saying there have still yet been no provable connection between aspartame and any heath problem. If you're a Bayesian thinker at this point your priors should be set on the far side of "it's for all practical purposes inert in the body." But refined sugar, you'll be drowning in real documented health problems.