Proof Engine Verification: Artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose promote weight gain and metabolic disease.

Automated fact-verification of the claim: "Artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose promote weight gain and metabolic disease." Verdict: PARTIALLY VERIFIED Key Findings SC1 (Association) — HOLDS: 3 independent peer-reviewed sources confirm a statistically significant association between artificial sweetener consumption and weight gain / metabolic disease outcomes in humans (B1, B2, B3 — all citations fully verified). SC2 (Causation) — FAILS: Only 1 source was identified for the causal sub-claim (B4 — a mechanistic mouse-model study), far below the threshold of 3. Multiple meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) — the gold standard for causal inference — actively contradict the causal claim, showing neutral or mildly beneficial effects on weight. The observational association is likely confounded by reverse causality: people who are already overweight or at metabolic risk preferentially choose diet/low-calorie products, creating a spurious association in observational data. Sucralose specifically lacks the observed association: the CARDIA 2023 longitudinal study found no significant adiposity associations for sucralose (all ptrend > 0.05), while aspartame and saccharin showed significant associations. Files proof.py — Re-runnable Python verification script proof.md — Structured proof report proof_audit.md — Full verification audit trail proof_narrative.md — Plain-language summary proof.json — Machine-readable structured data Generated by Proof Engine v1.3.1.