People who use the artificial sweetener aspartame are better off consuming sugar since aspartame can actually contribute to weight gain rather than weight loss For example high levels of aspartame have been shown to trigger a craving for food by depleting

In the given argument, author claims that consuming sugar is better than consuming artificial sweetener aspartame based on following claims. First claim author makes is that aspartame depletes the brain of a chemical that registers the sense of being full, thus results in craving for more food leading to weight gain rather than weight loss. Secondly, sugar can help in burning calories if taken just at least after 45 minutes of exercise which is not the case with aspartame usage. Author concludes based on above claims that people who are using aspartame are less likely to achieve their dietary goals.

There are few flaws with the argument. First major flaw in the argument is the purpose of usage of aspartame. Author assumes that people taking aspartame sweetener for dietary purpose. There could be other medical reasons of taking aspartame. There could be a possibility that it is having other benefits for people suffering from diseases such as diabetes or any other disease where in usage of normal sugar is harmful for the patient. Thus, author fails to consider other aspect of using sweetener.

Second flaw with the argument is that of weight gain due to aspartame usage. Author claims that using aspartame depletes the sense of a person by which one gets to know that one’s stomach is full. Simply eating more can not lead to weight gain, it may also lead to digestion issues. In such cases, it won’t increase the weight. There could be other reasons of weight gain in the people using aspartame sweetener such as eating more calories than burning intentionally to gain weight or it could be also be due to some medical issues. Thus, here author fails to analyze the effect of aspartame in multidimensional approach.

Third flow with the argument that sugar helps burning calories. Calory burning could be due to continuous exercise or it may be that people taking sugar after 45 minutes of exercise might be taking some other supplement. It needs further investigation that sugar helps in burning calories. It may depend person to person.

Thus, it is important to consider all aspects of the usage of aspartame and sugar. Considering few effects and neglecting other parameters is not advisable to conclude that sugar is better off than using aspartame.