The headline is broadly defensible, but the qualifications matter. Effect sizes vary by population, the strongest claims rest on shorter trials, and credible voices push back on how it's typically framed.
There is evidence, in animal models, in animal models, that artificial sweeteners can disrupt the gut microbiome, but those were fairly high doses of artificial sweeteners, and it's unclear if the same thing pertains to humans, still unclear, I should say, has not been investigated thoroughly.
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Native comments, Twitter mentions, and Reddit threads about this claim — surfaced together so the conversation isn't fragmented across platforms.
Bookmarking — the dossier-vs-overview split is the right call. Most of the time I want overview; sometimes I want receipts.
Would love a "what would change this verdict" RSS feed. Sign me up if it exists.
I do wonder if there are individual factors where in that individual for whom it becomes a productive change there's a lack of symbiosis between the evolution of their bacteria in the high aspartame environment versus the adaptation of another person in the context of a high like my my wife drinks Diet Coke right like I say that like it's somehow bad like but she she freaking loves Diet Coke she probably has like one every other day I don't know that that's a high or low dose but it is she's as healthy as a horse great shape yeah she's as healthy as a horse um if I drink it I can't stand the taste of it truthfully but sometimes I'm like so parched and thirsty I'll drink one doesn't seem to cause me any ills but again I've seen people and and there's clearly an association um between its use and and otherwise that that would be a super interesting study I think to do where you would basically take a bunch of individuals and you would look at their you know get some baseline data around their microbiome and then you would put them you would start them either on a bunch of Diet Cokes uh or you would start them on a bunch of you know just soda water and then measure their microbiome over time and then I do a little wash out Peri period or maybe just switch them do a crossover and see what happen because you know it really is a question this this is kind of my frustration with a lot of the microbiome studies that are done is they treat it um the the way that we do you know drug studies which is you just have cohorts and you're just comparing them to each other really in the microbiome the person matters and so crossover designs are going to give you way more information about what's doing what in that person and then you can start to draw themes about Pathways but that would be an interesting design to do because it could be that at the onset if there was something about these people who could you know live off of Diet Coke and let's assume people prefer Diet Coke over you know unflavored soda water if there was something about their starting microbiomes that enabled them to you know lose weight uh in in that way or be healthy in that way that could be a solution