text: Artificial sweeteners, like Rumsfeld's aspartame, are often carcinogenic so if this is done as a public health measure it's foolish. Better to encourage kids to eat fresh fruit whole. Plastic bottles, e.g. bpa & bps, are endocrine disrupters too, causing early onset puberty in girls and male breast development. Tell that to parents and kids and they might make better choices. 
  
  Stevia is s'posed to be a better sugar alternative, if you can find it in sodas but the plastic bottle concern remains. Beet sugar is most all GMO, too, so loaded with pesticide residue. Lots of reasons to encourage kids to eat fruit. Maybe subsidizing used popsicle trikes to run through poor neighborhoods and play music to get kids to chase them down to get an apple would help get them off sugar. Diabetes and obesity induced heart attacks probably kill nearly as many as cancer does.