Aspartame: It's Not Worth Zero CaloriesFor decades, companies have marketed their products as cheaper and better for the consumer. With beverage companies, each company was trying to make the best drinks, and when it came time for their drinks to be “healthier,” the competition increased. For decades now these companies have been competing with each other to have the drink with the fewest calories. Taking a look at the competition between Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola, each of them has launched several products that claim to have zero calories, but this does not mean that these drinks are necessarily better for the consumer. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayLast year and in years before, a scandal broke out over the use of aspartame in many diet sodas. Aspartame is an artificial sweetener used in most diet soft drinks. It has recently been discovered that aspartame has many negative health side effects. In an article in “Collective Evolution,” we read about how aspartame had been linked to metabolic diseases and digestive tract abnormalities. Non-caloric artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, have been found to “change the population of gut bacteria that direct metabolism, the conversion of food into energy or stored fuel.” Since this discovery, aspartame has been eliminated from Diet Pepsi, but it still exists in many diet soft drinks. This is an example of how the media influences the way the consumer treats their eating and drinking habits. Unfortunately, what the media tells the consumer isn't always true (go figure). This is a terrible aspect of society, but that's another discussion. The media has long portrayed many things as healthy. For example, cigarettes were said to have great health benefits when they were first introduced to the market, but now cigarettes are a leading cause of cancer. In an effort to make the consumer healthier, or appear so, and to beat the competition, these cola companies have actually harmed their customers in the long run. This falls into the broad category of “Nonsense Du Jour”. It is absolutely absurd that no further studies are being conducted on the ingredients present in the drinks consumed daily by millions of people. It's understandable that it's difficult to predict long-term effects, but when something like artificial sweeteners has been found to cause negative health effects, it would make sense to find a better, actually healthier, way to solve the problem by having aspartame in soft drinks. In addition to this nonsense, the media will always be guilty. There is such pressure in the media to be healthier, but when things like this happen, it would make sense to advertise against it from now on. The use of aspartame wasn't even publicized until recent years. The average consumer doesn't realize what they're ingesting most of the time. This is a lack of understanding of science. This is because the process of eliminating the calories contained in a drink to make it "healthier" is, in fact, scientific. Companies need chemists to find compounds that can be added to their product to make it taste like sugar's real counterpart, without the calories. This is probably how aspartame was born. The public's lack of understanding of what they are putting into their bodies and the lack of trust in these chemists enough to put something like aspartame in their drinks is.