Just a comment about aspartame and other coal tar salts that trick the body into thinking it's eating something sweet:
I have reams of information on this, and groups like "Nutrition and Fitness Board," or American Dietetics, or dozens of these so-called "Official" diet and fitness ghurus are organizations funded by companies like Monsanto and DuPont. Don't be a sucker.
If you want an unblemished report that is not biased (and Im2manly said it also) then you would want someone that YOU KNOW has no dog in that fight. So any group that you don't KNOW who controls it, should be mentioned accordingly. So, if you want to mention somebody like "Nutrition and Fitness Board," then say, "I don't know the origin of this group, but...."
On the other hand, We all know about
Weston Price. There's no problem there. Here's another one:
http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/
These people have no axe to grind, either. We KNOW they don't make a dime on aspartame.
Like I said, however, I know of dozens of documented cases, including an airline pilot who would only order diet Cokes to drink during a flight, and who died of Liver disease, directly attributed to aspartame. (Some people are far more susceptible than others).
But why not use good ol' common sense for a change? Neither Splenda, (yes, I said Splenda and I also have a lot of information on that, too) or HFCS, or SweetnLow, or anything like that could be good for you, because it wasn't intended to be. It was intended to treat your conscience, for all those, Ahem, (idiots) who attributed their weight gains strictly to sugar.
If you will simply go by the principles of diet, you will see that too much of anything will start cascading against you and then you cannot stop the avalanche. But I'm getting into principles, and I realize we are talking specific supplements, so... really sorry about that.
What I do is start with the principle, and then build on it. But I also realize that few Americans want to start there. That's why it's so hard to tell them where to begin.