There are millions of people with cgms that drink soda with artificial sweeteners that see no spike in their blood sugar. There are enough people in this world that would have to deal with serious health complications if aspartame caused BG spikes that we'd know for absolutely certain if it did. And we don't.

> Also sending "sweet" signals from the mouth can't be good in the long run

Well that's a bold statement based on nothing...

> pretty sure it spikes insulin somewhat,

Pretty sure "pretty sure" isn't the basis upon which to set health or food safety policy.

Funny enough their guesses are backed by recent studies.

Funnily enough 'sweeteners' as a class are so diverse that any claim that 'recent studies' universally show a common effect can be thrown straight into the rubbish bin.

Erithritol, Stevia, and Aspartame are all so wildly different that it is implausible they share a common mode of action.

How would it spike insulin, if it does not contain carbohydrates (or any micronutrient for that matter)?

Destroying, or changing? I've read these articles in the past, and the wording is careful. Or has this changed recently?

There's a lot of other things I'm going to die from before I die from artificial sweeteners.

That's an overly simplistic model. The factors leading to your demise are interrelated in a complex way. Diet (including sweeteners) can affect your weight and diabetes risk, which can affect a number of downstream morbidities (heart disease, kidney disease, cancer), any of which can be the one to take you out.

A quip from Adam Eget on one of Norm Macdonald's podcasts: A lot of things would have to go very right for me to end up dying from too much salt.

My psych seems to worry way more about sugar, caffeine, and blue light than she worries about harmful thoughts and habits. I managed to please her by switching to cases and cases of flavored sparkling water. It tastes pretty good.

I don't enjoy drinking a lot of soda, but god, it's so ubiquitous, it's not easy to drink anything else. I mean, I usually choose iced tea instead, but a lot of times, if I go to a restaurant, I have a menu of crap where I choose the least harmful thing possible.