I DON’T TRUST THEM: Artificial Sweeteners and Weight Gain. “Artificial, or nonnutritive, sweeteners have no calories and are often used as diet aids. But while some well-designed trials have found that those randomly assigned to drink artificially sweetened beverages gained less weight than those given sugar-sweetened drinks, large population studies suggest that frequent consumption of artificial sweeteners may be linked with unanticipated consequences, including weight gain.”

If you eat a lot of sweet stuff, you need a lot of sweetening. If you eat less, you notice more subtle sweetnesses — like, as a commenter here noted, baby carrots — that you wouldn’t otherwise. I think that artificial sweeteners mess this up.