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> meaning that people with a sweet tooth can avoid the large, known harms of sugar with minimal exertion of willpower

Aspartame tastes so awful I can't see how that's going to make me thankful.

On top of it tasting bad, it gives me migraines. The only theory I have for why that is is that I'm allergic.

Another more plausible explanation is that it's psychological. It's common among many who believe aspartame is unhealthy that it gives them migraines or headaches, but in a double-blind study, every single person who self-reported adverse reactions to aspartame were unable to do so over the course of the study. On the other hand, those who claimed sensitivity rated very high on various psychological metrics such as perceived stress and anxiety:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4364783/

This is not to say that you don't genuinely feel something and are just making it up, but that it's not a consequence of aspartame and is rooted in an entirely different phenomenon that you've associated with aspartame for one reason or another.

Diet sodas to me taste awful, but lately I've been putting a single packet of Equal in my coffee with some vanilla and it tastes great. Lord knows I can cut out the sugar wherever possible.

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