It's obvious by a simple experiment: cut out everything sweet (at the very least candy, sweets and desserts) for a couple of weeks, then try eating a candy bar or a thickly-frosted cupcake. It will taste almost unbearably sweet.

Make sweets something you only enjoy as a rare treat, and you'll find that you'll eat much less of them, because the sweetness will simply be too much.

Is there any peer reviewed literature that supports this?

This insulin lowers your blood sugar. Because artificial sweeteners provide only the sensation of sweetness and not the energy content of an actual sugar, your blood sugar falls low enough that your unconscious brain is compelled to eat.

People who drink diet soda consistently eat more calories than they would have eaten if they had drunk a regular soda--even if you include the calories from the soda.