The argument that people who use the artificial sweetener aspartame are better off consuming sugar, since aspartame can actually contribute to weight gain rather than weight loss is flawed. In this essay, I , Jacob Newberger, will discuss the reasoning behind this argument that was presented in a part of an article in a magazine devoted to regional life and show why it is logically unsound.
One underlying assumption of the argument is that all the people who use the artificial sweetener aspartame work out continuously at least 45 minutes. This assumption is not valid since it is plausible that, for example, most people who need a diet can not work out continuously for 45 minutes, because of their mass and poor health. The argument would be made stronger if the author specified the exercise frequency of the people he mentioned. Another invalid assumption is that the calorie-burning benefit from consuming sugar after a 45 minutes exercise is significant.
The author ignores the possibility that the calorie-burning benefit is nothing compare to the calorie difference between sugar and aspartame. Another invalid assumption is that people who have a food craving, which can be caused by high levels of aspartame, consume normal level of aspartame. The flaw here is that the author ignores the possibility that in order to reach high levels of aspartame in an average human body, one has to eat in few hours an aspartame amount that a normal person eats annually. One way of improving the argument is to point out the amount of aspartame that can trigger craving.
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