Agreed. But I have no doubts that null and void, and others, will take issue with that fact.
It is a well established fact that people will experience certain effects if they expect them to occur.
Absolutely. And this is why any scientific test should be conducted exactly in the manner you suggested. For example:
During a four-month period, subjects received either aspartame, sugar or a placebo and underwent physical and psychological testing. Some subjects were given doses of up to 45 milligrams per kilogram of body weight--the equivalent of 17 to 24 12-ounce diet beverages for males and 14 to 19 12-ounce drinks for females. In the general population, most Americans who consume aspartame take in 3 milligrams per kilogram of body weight a day, the equivalent of one or less 12-ounce diet beverage. Despite the high consumption of aspartame, the 48 normal subjects showed no changes in mood, memory, behavior, electroencephalograms (which record the electrical signals of the brain) or physiology that could be tied to aspartame, Dr. Spiers found. Although some subjects reported headaches, fatigue, nausea and acne, the same number of incidences were reported by subjects taking placebo and sugar as those taking aspartame.
Study reaffirms safety of aspartame
The aspartame induced headache is, at least from what I've read, the most common complaint regarding aspartame. There has never been any substantiated, reproducible evidence that aspartame causes headaches, or that aspartame causes harm to humans in any way - provided that one doesn't abuse the ingredient. Just about everything can be dangerous to human health if it is consumed in excessive quantities.
So, the scientific evidence available at this time tells us that experiencing headaches or depression from aspartame is either psychosomatic in nature, or that something else is causing these results. Some researchers claim that a folate deficiency could be responsible. There is evidence that folate deficiency can explain many of the symptoms attributed to aspartame use. But, for some unknown reason, people experiencing these symptoms continue to blame aspartame, for which there is no legitimate scientific evidence to support their beliefs, rather than the more likely cause that sound science supports.
People can talk themselves into supporting all kinds of things, and then adopt a fixed mentality that no amount of evidence to the contrary will shake. This thread serves as a solid example of that very thing.
The end user gets theirs after it has been degraded by heat in their hot coffee or tea, in baked goods, in cold soda that spent a week in a rail car on a siding in Phoenix or was otherwise heat processed.
Besides pasteurization, commercial products are a stew of other chemicals, natural and man made, your "Gold Standard" test doesn't have the aspartame age in a pressurized container mixed with phosphoric acid, carbonic acid, citric acid, scorched sugar coloring and God knows what artificial flavors and colors.
Still probably not a problem if it always breaks down to phenylalanine+aspartic acid+methanol and never to phenylal+anineasp+articacidmeth+anol. The same group of letters doesn't always spell the same words...