I have had a different experience with aspartame.
Like so many others, I lived on Coca Cola for most of my youth and then, as I aged, I decided to take the 'healthy" alternative and drink Diet Coke or Pepsi, mostly the latter as the taste is not quite so harsh as Coke's is.
By my mid 50s, I was prescribed statins to lower my cholesterol and subsequently suffered lots of quite severe muscle pain in the legs, especially first thing in the mornings. I became aware that muscle pain is often cited as a side effect of taking statins, albeit my doctor looked at me stony faced when I asked about it.
However, my naturopath daughter-in-law assured me that it was a known side effect and that I should take CoQ10 tablets for it. This is the only natural remedy advice of hers that I have ever taken but, lo and behold, the beneficial effect was almost immediate. The muscle pains mostly went away but over a few years started to return, albeit not to the same extreme level as prior to my taking CoQ10 tablets.
Then, about four years ago, I caught the flu shortly after Christmas and was laid low for about three weeks. When I get the flu, I get it really bad. During that time, my wife did our basic shopping but I could not ask her to carry home the dozens of bottles of Pepsi Max, viz sweetened with Aspartame, that I usually drink gallons of. So my supplies of aspartame sweetened Pepsi ran out and I was forced to drink (gasp!) tap water during that time. Unbelievably to me at the time, after having no aspartame sweetened Pepsi for a bit over two weeks, my severe leg pains disappeared.
So I put two and two together and wondered it there was a correlation between my drinking aspartame flavoured Pepsi and my severe leg pains. So I went "cold turkey" in ceasing to drink aspartame sweetened anything. A while after that, I ceased taking CoQ10 tablets and the muscle pains did not return. That was seriously amazing!
So, over the past four years, I have drunk nothing other than unflavoured soda water which is really good with lots of ice as I live in a warm part of Australia (such that I have never seen snow in my my life), plus a couple of cups of double strength coffee every day.
I subsequently mentioned my experience with my doctor and his response was simply to say, "Yes. That aspartame is not good for you," with a little knowing chuckle.
For what it is worth, that is the experience of this septuagenarian with aspartame.