There is strong suspicion artificial sweeteners mess up your gut biome, but it’s not yet as established as the evils of sugar.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but which ones, and could you provide any sources? This is the first time I've heard that.

I'm not saying I'm right, as I'm not a biologist and this is just stuff I've seen (oft repeated) on the Internet, but:

A search on Google Scholar shows multiple publications exploring the adverse effects on sweeteners on gut microbiome:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=artificial+sweeteners+e...

I've definitely read that it may play a role in decoupling the taste of sweet with satisfaction. That in turn may lead people to ultimately eat more before feeling satisfied, which is bad.

Also, I think there might actually be some links to type II diabetes, but I'm skeptical of causation on that one. It's not implausible, but fully correcting for people already trying to reduce sugar intake sounds essentially impossible in that case.

As part of improving my health, I came off of drinking sugary sodas a few years back and went sugar free. My dentist remained unimpressed saying that the sugar is only a small part of the story and really it's the acid in soda that will cause me problems. I now drink a lot more water around any soda consumption to mitigate it slightly, but I gotta have some bad habits..

> but I gotta have some bad habits..

I think this should be normalized. In a lot of threads like this, there's some teetotalers that say all vices are bad and you should stop all of them at once.

But vices are fine, in moderation. Having some soda every once in a while is fine. Drinking it by the gallon every day is problematic. But it's been normalized like that by the companies that produce them.

Back in my day (shush kids, grandpa is talking), we got one, maybe two small glasses of soda and some crisps on a sunday. That was it.

People who moralize over vices tend to have some dirty little vices themselves.

still being hypocrite doesnt make you wrong

Possibly carcinogenic, but that's a big possibly, compared to the blatantly obvious harm caused by high-fructose corn syrup.

That's news to me. Wikipedia also notes that Aspartame which is the sweetener used in most diet soda, has not been found to be carcinogenic with a bunch of citations.

Or are you talking about other ingredients?

He's not. Artificial sweeteners are one of the most demonized additives on the planet despite being one of the most studied. Because people are so often looking for a reason to get rid of them.

Even the studies of them being bad for "getting used to sweetness" and thus making people more obese through compensatory over-eating are studies that rely on self-reporting and polling.

When properly controlled, physics works as it always has and you can't magic mass or energy out of thin air.

If you're talking about aspartame it's about as possibly carcinogenic as the moon landing was possibly faked.