I'm just a girl...

If one small packet of artificial stuff is all you put in your body per day, you might be okay. But chances are good that if you read the labels of everything you eat, you are putting artificial things in your body day after day after day (more than just that one packet in the morning). That all adds up.

I read the ingredients of everything I buy. As a rule, if there is something on there I don't recognize, I don't eat it.

It is a little overboard to avoid all things artificial. Many artificial compounds are just manufactured organic compounds. That is, the molecule has been created artificially rather than extracted from something (like a plant) that produced it naturally, but the end result is the same molecule. In some cases it is safer - for example, artificial peach flavoring does not carry the risk of including cyanide, whereas natural peach flavoring does (because of the cyanide found naturally in peach pits). There is a huge difference between artificially produced organic compounds like this (the source of artificial flavors and the like) and things like artificial sweeteners, which are not found in nature and may or may not be safe for consumption.

Actually, that's not a good rule. There are numerous "natural" things that are very dangerous to ingest, and are even commonly sold as "dietary supplements" without any real testing or regulation at all. There are also plenty of synthesized and processed things that are perfectly healthy to ingest (corn, for example, isn't healthy UNLESS it's been chemically processed as the aztechs were doing thousands of years ago).

Mainstream news is a really horrible place to get your medical information. This is a single

preliminary study of a single artificial sweetener. You cannot draw any larger conclusions like "all artificial sweeteners are bad for you". It would be perfectly reasonable to avoid them if you have concerns as they have no real health benefits so avoiding them is perfectly safe but I would caution against slipper slope logical fallacies and alarmism. He quotes that there are hundreds of studies over 20years finding that it's safe and then ONE study that finds that it *might* have some negative side effects and warrants more study.

Also, most things don't "all ad up". Heavy metals will accumulate, some forms of damage from toxins can be permanent and progress from repeated exposure, unless you have evidence that surcalose "adds up" that just pure speculation. Most things get flushed right out of your body. It's not like you worry about too much salt "adding up" in your body, which would kill you, because it doesn't.

But in general I really do not get what people's obsession with alternative sweeteners is so and really wish they would just opt to eat something not sweetened if they have some kind of reason for avoiding sugar so I'm somewhat on your side there. Especially when it comes to sweetened beverages. People should just drink more water. And all the artificial sweeteners taste like poo to me...

Whenever a study makes it to the general media, it probably was in print in the primary literature about 3 or 4 years ago (it takes that long for it to get the attention of non-specialist people). Then include that the publishing process can take 2 to 3 years. So, chances are this finding took place 5 to 7 years ago.