It's true that refined sugar has been very clearly proven to be associated with terrible consequences to your health. But most of the sugar substitutes used in "diet" products simply don't have those warnings because they're just newer and less studied. But there's been a lot of recent research showing just how bad these artificial sweeteners can be even in small amounts. Some studies have even shown long-lasting and intergenerational effects on the gut microbiome[0] and increased cancer risks.[1] The impacts on the gut microbiome[2] are particularly worrying to me. Many of these sweeteners love to sit in your gut for a while and can lead to really weird microbiome makeups and possibly even be a risk factor for diabetes and/or metabolic syndromes

[0] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.79584...

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25231862/

More reading:

- https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/artificial-sweeteners-su...

- https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...