Aspartame, or Equal, is a different story.

Aspartame was originally on the FDA’s list of approved neurological inhibitor drugs before it was tested as a sweetener. Since then, it has been proven to be addictive, and also proven to cause severe headaches. Several double blind tests have been done to prove this over and over.

Even Splenda is not without fault.

If you believe the ads that say it starts with sugar and bananas, that is all you should believe. After that, the ingredients taken from the bananas and the sugar are chemically altered into something our body doesn’t fully assimilate, Then it is mixed with other man-made chemicals to form Splenda. Tests are still ongoing on Splenda.

Stevia is your best alternative to sugar, as it comes from the Stevia Plant. Stevia is a genus of about 240 species of herbs and shrubs in the sunflower family (Asteraceae), native to subtropical and tropical South America and Central America. The species Stevia rebaudiana, commonly known as sweetleaf, sweet leaf, sugarleaf, or simply stevia, is widely grown for its sweet leaves.

So after all this, nothing so far links cancer to diet soda, but with all the man-made crap out there it is much better for you to have drinks with natural sugars, fructose, dextrose and beet sugar, and cane sugar. These are all things that are naturally occurring compounds, along with Stevia.