I'm a fickle thing.

I bet she knows what 23 times 3 is, though.

Have you noticed that there is much less variety of "store brand" products? A year ago you could find store brand diet caffiene free cola for $0.69/2 liters. Now, your lucky to get diet cola for $0.99/2 liters.

Consumer products have all increased in price, income has not.:(

I heard the rising gas prices increasing transportation cost is to blame ... shrug

That doesn't explain the products that are entirely missing - diet rootbeer, caffiene free diet cola, diet orange, etc. They aren't there even at the higher price. :sniff:

I've heard that drinking diet drinks makes you fat.

That explains a lot. And I mean a LOT (of me)!

Apparently, Ma was telling me, when you eat artificial sweetener, the body still has the exact same response: convert it to energy/fat. It doesn't discriminate between real sugars and artificial substitutes. Because it is its sweetness that triggers the response.

I read something like that too.

Can't win, can't win. I may as well go back to my steady diet of Miller Lite.

Perhaps the price differential wasn't enough so sales suffered and the benefit to the store was reduced. They get a much better return on their shelf space selling the name brand products. (just a guess)

This is true (well, I'm not sure what you mean by the "sweetness" triggering the response, the flavor has nothing to do with how the molecules break down, but the molecules do break down all the same.) However, more of the artificial sweetener must be added to achieve the same level of subjective sweetness. Which is still do-able, because it's so much cheaper. And because it's so much cheaper, it also gets put into everything else on the grocery store shelf as well. It's not just the diet soda, it's the bread and the ketchup and the mustard and the lunchmeat and the potato chips and the pickle as well.

What?

Many top brands of all those items contain high-fructose corn syrup. Check out the labels sometime.

Whew! I thought you were talking about Equal or Splenda type stuff.

And let's not forget that artificial sweeteners are known carcinogens.

Just avoid them people. It's simple. ;)