Something for nothing?

I'm a big skeptic of the free lunch. You gotta work out to build muscles. You gotta eat right and exercise to lose weight. You gotta discipline yourself to grow spiritually.

Consequently, I've always been mildly nervous about artificial sweetners like Equal and Splenda and Nutrasweet. Not enough to abstain, mind you, but enough to feel a twinge of uncertainty every time I reached for a diet soda. How did you get the tasty sweet sensation with NO calories? Could you really be getting something for nothing?

Well, the National Cancer Institute announced yesterday that it studied over half a million people without finding any link between typical aspartame consumption (less than 600 mg/day) and cancer or brain tumors. (Aspartame is the stuff in Equal packets and sweetens most diet sodas except for some of the new-fangled ones like Pepsi ONE.)

• Of course, the American Beverage Association is delighted.
• Of course, they would finish this study right after we switched to Splenda, which is not aspartame. Sigh.
• And of course, the Internet is not convinced about Splenda (or any artificial sweetener) safety. Check out the skeptics here or here or here.

So I guess the jury is still out, but it sure looks more settled than it did before they tested those half million retirees for 2 years.