yes it started way back when corps had to ‘balance’ their food products for ya to buy thru media to get one to buy it. Hey, we got your back!!! Eat this and thrive and we bank profit 
Very cool back then your great aunt had better understanding of what to eat and not. Plus things like fast food restaurants were not on every corner for a fast drive thru inhale the food issue. One cooked more back then and had more control. Life now is out of control on food. Well it seems that way to me 
My motto as a 5-year-old: “If you eat like you have diabetes (this based on my Aunt’s diet), you’ll never get it.” Maybe if they had TikTok back then, we’d all be a lot healthier and I’d be famous. 
I always say to people who trot that one out, “Yes, eat your strychnine, cyanide, and arsenic in moderation!”
Which is a good reason not to buy such foods. I’ve heard advice to the effect that you know a food is over-processed if it has more than five listed ingredients (and some say three). Another bit of good advice is not to buy anything with ingredients that your grandmother (or your great-grandmother, for you youngsters) wouldn’t have recognised.
Never2late. I would agree 100%
Yet, we still do it because we like to think that if we quote our expert it’s the truth. This also occurs in the Keto/LCH world as well.
Intellectual discourse has sadly left the building. Less than 50% of all studies can be replicated.
Reading a scientific paper requires some effort and some investigation. I will also pay attention to the conclusion and any conflicts of interest. Some people will quote you a study that has nothing to do with their point or actually validates the opposite of their position.
Oh and we had, maybe still have the phase where everything originally sugary contains sugar AND sweeteners at the same time. Worst from both world, yay! It’s sugary, harmful but tastes horrible too! (For me.)
I have zero problems with the sweeteners I can eat (that’s not a long list, xylitol and erythritol. I can eat maltitol too but it makes no sense to me as it’s not really sweet just carby, very bad deal. and its effect on the body isn’t the best either). But I dislike when they put sugar or sweeteners into things where it’s very much unneeded and maybe even strongly unpreferred by me. Like meat products. Fortunately it’s usually tiny but I still go for the no sugar sausages (when I remember to look at the label). It’s sausage, it needs NO added sugar… It’s even tasty, sugar can’t make it tastier so how stupid is to add a tiny bit?
But sweeteners aren’t proper food so I am against eating a ton of them just like I was the same regarding sugar. (I ate lots of sweets but my sugar consumption, while being high, still was adorable compared to the average intake, that’s insane… I still did what I could to reduce the amount. I just got way better at it on keto and especially on carnivore ;))
And sometimes moderation means zero amount Yep, it’s annoying when people considers all is fine in small amounts. Nope. It’s not true even for food that isn’t officially toxic but still very bad… Even if we can handle a really tiny amount, it should be occasional, only if it’s too hard not to and we should be aware that it’s not “okay”, merely “tolerable”. (Maybe it’s a good idea if it balances it out with positive mental things. Yep, it’s not all physical, our health and well-being is more complex.)
But eating a tiny amount is still better than eating a lot. So if it’s a first step because the jump is impossible, I am all for it. But we should aim for better eventually. I know some people never will do even a tiny step… Not caring about our health, crazy…
But one can buy stevia leaves or pure stevia… At least here. I only tried out those. And stevia mixed with sugar alcohols too. It promptly became my number one hated sweetener until I got something from Australia with monk fruit on it 
That was the most horrible tasting item in my whole life and once I had a very memorably bitter medicine and tasted some spoiled food too…
I hate most sweeteners with a passion but it’s because of their aftertaste. As far as I know, stevia is fine health wise. I just can’t eat it even when it is used with 1000 times as much xylitol. Nothing masks that horrid taste. “I rather eat any dessert unsweetened”, I used to say, trying to express how I hate it but well, now I actually eat my desserts unsweetened and they aren’t even bad… 
Sweetness is overrated. Though quite nice here and there.