Aspartame, the artificial sweetener found in many diet sodas and used as an ‘alternative’ sweetener, has been found recently to have detrimental – specifically, cancerous – effects.

A study performed by researcher Victoria Innes-Brown, after mounting concerns with how much diet coke her family members seemed to consume daily, showed that of 48 rats experimented on up to 67 percent of all females developed tumors roughly the size of golf balls or larger. The male population didn’t do too well either: 21 percent of the males developed similar cancerous growths.'

Read more: The Deathly Icing on the Cake: Revealing the Cancerous Truth About Aspartame