I've been concentrating on cutting down the amount of fake sugar I've been consuming ever since Cynthia convinced me to put some thought into which chemmies I'm ingesting and now my Diet Coke consumption is down to about one every other week, mostly ordered at restaurants out of habit. But holy crap, if the study about the rats and the yogurt didn't convince you to ditch the little blue packets, did you know that at one time, aspartame was classified by the government as an element of biological warfare?

Splenda monkey is entirely extracted from back!

You've got to love crazy old guys and Jack LaLanne with his juice de vivre seems a little crazier than most, but considering that he's 90 and can probably still bench press more than Justin Timberlake (or actually bench press Justin Timberlake himself), he's been saying this all along:

If man makes it, I don't eat it. Even these diet soft drinks. They're just something to sell. They've got artificial coloring and flavoring, man-made, right? Keep away from that! Drink water! I don't put anything artificial in my body. And I take 25 or 30 supplements every day, everything from (vitamin) A to Z(inc), but they're all from natural sources. Stick to Mother Nature.

Okay then! Jack's so smart! I'm just going to ignore his next sentence as hyperbole ("And if it tastes good, spit it out, or you're going to be fat.") because a perfectly ripe red strawberry is pretty much the best time that my mouth has all year long, and noshing the berries is not what sends my ass to Lane Bryant. Judging from our poll, about half of you are swigging the stuff too. Does this give you some pause before reaching for that crisp, cold can of Diet Coke?