As the palette of artificial sweeteners has grown and manufacturers have honed the skill with which they blend them to mimic sugar taste, debate has swirled around whether these sensory stand-ins really help people consume fewer calories and avoid weight gain. New research adds another dimension to the uncertainty: It suggests that even when artificial sweeteners fool the taste buds, they still don't fool the ultimate arbiter of our appetites -- our subconscious brains. The latest evidence for this comes from a brain scanning study performed in the Netherlands. Paul Smeets, a neuroscientist at University Medical Center Utrecht, used a...