They did? Did they employ the "null and void" feelings approach to scientific experimentation? People just believed the industry when they made those claims?
The manufacturers of aspartame have scientifically proved that aspartame is harmless.
So have numerous independent studies that have been published in highly regarded journals that have been peer reviewed.
You continue to assume that the only possible breakdown products of aspartame are phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol.
What is the breakdown that is causing your symptoms? How is it different than the breakdown that happens when you eat a banana? Do you have any legitimate research to support you? Or, are you relying on those feelings again?
"Let's eat Grandma" is not the same as "Let's eat, Grandma".
If your Aunt had a beard, she'd be your Uncle.
Tell us exactly what happens to aspartame under those conditions and how that causes depression or headaches when consumed.
You are in the position of rejecting Alfred Wegener's hypothesis that continents drift, all of his data on matching coast lines, all of his data on matching geology, all of his data on fossils common to edges that so clearly fit together simply because he couldn't articulate how the continents could move.
Yet to quote Galileo, Eppur si muove "And yet it moves"
You act like you have the expertise to know all the possible chemical pathways and know to a level of certainty that none of those pathways, in none of their conceivable genetic or allergic variants could possibly cause anyone any ill effect. Nice act.
You would have blocked a century of pain and fever relief, because after it was discovered that aspirin works, it took a century of hard work to figure out how it works.
I make no claim to knowing how aspartame contributes to depression or headaches. I have an idea of how it could, but recognize that the finer details of the chemical breakdown, metabolic pathways and physiological effects are well beyond my expertise.
I am competent to observe a situation, formulate a question, make a hypothesis, make a prediction based on that hypothesis, test that hypothesis, and analyze the results.
Perhaps you recognize those steps?
Perhaps not.
That is precisely what I did, and I reached the conclusion that in my case consumption of aspartame is invariably linked with subsequent depression, even when I am unaware of the presence of the aspartame when I consume it, even when it is in a formerly "safe" product that changed formulation to include aspartame. This is as close to a double blind test as an individual can get.
Now tell me again that I can't be seeing what my own personal experience shows me, because it doesn't agree with your biases.