Don't forget, your friendly neighborhood Monsanto was the inventor and manufacturer of NutraSweet, found in everything ranging from diet coke to chewing gum.
NutraSweet's prime ingredient is aspartame, a known carcinogen and the cause of aspartame disease. This disease has over 92 symptoms, including abdominal pain, insomnia, diarrhea, vision loss, and death. It also mimics the symtoms of MS, and can cause weight gain (ironic, since it is the active ingredient in anything labled "diet" or "low-carb"). It is comprised of 10% methanol, which breaks down into formaldehyde and other compounds when heated above 86° F. Methanol is considered a poison by the EPA. Thus when you accidentally leave your can of C2 in the car on a sunny day, or if you accidentally digest the soda, you are poisoning yourself.
How was anything this horrible approved for human consumption? To answer this question, we look to the approvers: the FDA. Back in the 70's, the FDA repeatedly denied Monsanto's requests to release aspartame to the market because of cancer and siezures showing in lab animals. This went on for eight years until President Ronald Reagan appointed a new FDA commissioner by the name of Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes. Dr. Hayes quickly approved aspartame in 1981, against the decision of his own board of inquiry! Later, he left the FDA for a position at G.D. Searle (a company owned by Monsanto).
Today, Monsanto no longer owns NutraSweet. They auctioned off the company back in 1999, shortly after a mass email from someone named Nancy Markle spread the news of aspartame poisoning. That same year, the FDA commissioner at the time, Dr. Michael Friedman, left and became senior vice president of G.D. Searle for $500,000 a year. Now if that alone doesn't make you sick, go eat some sugarless candy for some aspartame-induced nausea.
Source: http://www.dorway.com/
Note: I have received a lot of rebuttals to this node, so let me clarify: I am not saying you should stop drinking your diet coke and start a strict regimen of broccoli and water. There are plenty of other things out there that are bad for you and people do them just the same. I smoke cigarettes occasionally, but I appriciate the warning label on the side, reminding me that they are indeed hazardous to your health. I am simply trying to give additional information about the product, since knowing is half the battle, and if you only know one side of the issue, you're fighting a quarter of the battle... or something. I was never good at math.