Zero Sugar Doesn’t Mean Zero Effect --Why diet sodas, zero-sugar colas and artificially sweetened drink mixes deserve a closer look.

Researched and written by ChatGPT

For years, we were taught a remarkably simple equation:

Sugar is bad.

Therefore, no sugar must be good.

That little bit of logic has helped create an enormous market for diet sodas, zero-sugar colas, flavoured water enhancers, energy drinks and powdered drink mixes that contain almost no calories and no sugar at all.

And because they contain no sugar, many people treat them almost like water.

They aren’t.

That doesn’t mean every artificially sweetened drink is dangerous. It doesn’t mean drinking a diet cola once in a while is going to hurt you. And it certainly doesn’t mean replacing six cans of full-sugar soda with six cans of zero-sugar soda can't dramatically reduce your sugar and calorie intake.

But “better than drinking a mountain of sugar” is not the same thing as “good for you.”

That distinction has somehow disappeared.

The Health Halo

Imagine somebody tells you they drink five regular sodas every day.

Most of us immediately recognize that as a lot of soda.

Now imagine they tell you they drink five bottles of water every day, each flavoured with a zero-sugar drink packet.

That sounds healthier, doesn't it?

Yet depending on the product, those five drinks may contain repeated doses of intensely sweet compounds such as aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose or other non-sugar sweeteners.

The calories may be gone.

The sugar may be gone.

The sweetness — and the ingredients producing it — certainly aren't.

And because the word ZERO is plastered across the package, people can lose the natural restraint they might have had with the original product.

One becomes three.

Three becomes five.

It's just flavoured water, right?

Not exactly.

Even the WHO Says the Goal Shouldn't Be Replacing Sugar With Sweeteners

This is where things get interesting.

In 2023, the World Health Organization issued guidance recommending that non-sugar sweeteners not be used as a strategy for controlling body weight or reducing the risk of chronic diseases.

That group includes familiar sweeteners such as:

• aspartame

• acesulfame potassium, or Ace-K

• sucralose

• saccharin

• stevia and stevia derivatives

The WHO's review found that replacing sugar with these sweeteners did not appear to provide a meaningful long-term advantage for reducing body fat.

Observational research also showed associations between long-term non-sugar-sweetener consumption and increased rates of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and premature death.

That does not prove the sweeteners caused those diseases. The WHO itself points out that the evidence may be affected by confounding — for example, people already at greater risk of obesity or diabetes may be more likely to consume diet products in the first place.

That's an important distinction.

But here's the part that rarely makes it into the advertising:

The WHO now specifically advises that reducing free sugar should ideally be accomplished without simply replacing it with non-sugar sweeteners.

Instead, the organization recommends gradually reducing the overall sweetness of the diet.

In other words, the answer to drinking ridiculously sweet sugar water all day may not be drinking ridiculously sweet artificially sweetened water all day.

Maybe the answer is becoming less dependent on everything tasting ridiculously sweet.

What About Headaches?

This is another area where the conversation gets polarized unnecessarily.

You've probably heard someone say:

“Aspartame gives me migraines.”

And you've probably heard someone else respond:

“That's been debunked.”

The actual research is considerably messier than either statement.

One randomized, double-blind crossover trial specifically recruited people who reported developing headaches after consuming aspartame.

Participants reported headaches on 33 percent of the days they consumed aspartame compared with 24 percent of placebo days.

Interestingly, the difference was substantially greater among participants who had previously been very confident that aspartame triggered their headaches.

The researchers concluded that some people may be particularly susceptible to headaches associated with aspartame consumption.

Another controlled study, however, found no significant increase in headaches with aspartame compared with placebo.

So no, the evidence does not support saying:

Aspartame causes headaches in everyone.

But it also doesn't justify telling someone who repeatedly gets a headache after consuming it that their experience is impossible.

Bodies aren't carbon copies.

And if someone regularly develops headaches while consuming large quantities of artificially sweetened drinks, stops drinking them, and the headaches disappear, removing the suspected trigger is a pretty reasonable experiment.

But Aren't These Sweeteners Approved as Safe?

Yes.

And that's another distinction worth understanding.

Health Canada currently considers aspartame safe when consumed within its established acceptable daily intake.

For aspartame, Canada's acceptable daily intake is 40 milligrams per kilogram of body weight per day.

The U.S. FDA uses an acceptable daily intake of 50 mg/kg/day for aspartame and 15 mg/kg/day for acesulfame potassium.

Those are substantial amounts.

So this article isn't arguing that one can of diet soda puts someone above a toxicological safety threshold.

It almost certainly doesn't.

But regulatory safety limits answer a particular question:

How much of this substance can someone consume regularly without an appreciable expected health risk?

That is not quite the same question as:

Is consuming increasingly large quantities of artificially sweetened drinks throughout the day an ideal dietary habit?

Those two questions routinely get mashed together.

Zero Is a Number. Not a Nutrient.

Perhaps that's the biggest marketing trick of all.

We see:

ZERO SUGAR

ZERO CALORIES

ZERO CARBS

And our brains quietly add another word that wasn't actually printed there:

HEALTHY.

But removing something from a product doesn't automatically make the remaining product beneficial.

A zero-sugar cola is still cola.

A zero-sugar energy drink is still an energy drink.

A powdered drink mix containing artificial sweeteners isn't suddenly equivalent to plain water simply because you poured it into water.

There can absolutely be situations where these products are useful.

Someone drinking several hundred grams of added sugar every week through soda may find that switching to a zero-sugar version helps them drastically cut their sugar intake.

Fine.

Use the bridge.

Just don't mistake the bridge for the destination.

Maybe We Need to Retrain Our Taste Buds

There is another possibility that receives remarkably little attention.

Instead of constantly finding new chemicals, extracts and formulations capable of making everything taste intensely sweet without adding calories...

What if we simply stopped expecting everything we drink to taste like candy?

Water.

Sparkling water.

Tea.

Coffee.

Fruit-infused water.

An occasional sweet drink that is actually treated like an occasional sweet drink.

Our ancestors somehow survived without carrying around a 40-ounce fluorescent mango beverage from sunrise until dinner.

Perhaps we can too.

Because the real lesson here isn't that sugar is good and artificial sweeteners are bad.

It's that nutrition rarely works in those neat little marketing binaries.

Sugar-free does not mean consequence-free.

Zero calories does not mean zero biological effect.

And “zero” on the front of a package was never a synonym for healthy.

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Read Three Amigas~ Book One Downloads Are Free Through Friday September 5th

Three Amigas Book One: Where It All Began

About sixteen years ago, I wrote a children's book about a little girl named Maddy and her two furry best friends, Sasha and Laya. I had no idea at the time that they would eventually become The Three Amigas — or that one book would turn into a whole series.

Sasha is a small but mighty Rottweiler who takes her job as guardian of the family very seriously. Laya is her younger Cocker Spaniel sister, who approaches the world with considerably more enthusiasm and considerably less caution. And then there is Maddy, the ten-year-old girl they both absolutely adore. Together, they learn about dogs, people, responsibility, leadership, friendship and the world around them — usually while having a pretty good adventure along the way.

This first book follows the girls through one ordinary-but-not-so-ordinary day: a trip to the veterinarian, a picnic and afternoon at the lake, encounters with other dogs, and conversations about everything from breed prejudice to animal rescue and what it really means to be responsible for an animal.

But mostly, it's about the relationship between a girl and her dogs.

And I've reached a point where I don't particularly care about selling a million copies of these books.

I want kids to read them.

So I've made the Kindle edition free through September 5.

You Do NOT Need a Kindle

This part is important because I don't think everyone realizes it:

You do not need to own a Kindle device to read a Kindle book.

You can read Kindle books on a computer, phone or tablet using Amazon's free Kindle reader.

So if you have a child, grandchild, niece, nephew — or know a young animal lover who might enjoy hanging out with Maddy, Sasha and Laya for a while — please feel free to pass this along.

The book is free.

[READ THE THREE AMIGAS FREE] 👈👈

If your young readers like this one, there are more adventures waiting for them.

This is where it all began.

And sixteen years later, I'd simply really like kids to get to know The Three Amigas.

                                                                                 

The U.S. Navy Has Dolphins. Actual Dolphins.

 Researched and written by ChatGPT

Just when you think humans have reached the outer limits of military technology, somebody at the Pentagon apparently looks at a bottlenose dolphin and says, “You know what that thing needs? A security clearance.”

This sounds like one of those internet stories that begins with a blurry photograph and ends three hours later with you wondering whether dolphins know classified information. Except this one is real. The United States Navy has operated a Marine Mammal Program since the 1960s, and today its highly trained workforce includes bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions. Their jobs include detecting underwater mines, locating submerged objects, recovering equipment and helping protect ships, harbours and naval installations from underwater intruders. (ONR)

And yes, the program overlaps with the strange underwater world occupied by Navy divers and special-warfare personnel. That distinction matters, because the internet version is often simplified to “Navy SEALs train combat dolphins.” The official Navy description is more specific: the dolphins and sea lions belong to specialized Marine Mammal Systems, while human divers and naval personnel work with those systems. There are also historical accounts of SEALs acting as mock enemy swimmers during exercises designed to test whether dolphins could locate somebody deliberately trying not to be found. (Navy SEALs)

Apparently, they could.

One former-SEAL account describes combat divers attempting all the tricks you'd expect from people professionally trained to sneak through water unnoticed: hiding beneath boats, hugging pier pilings, stirring up sediment and generally doing their absolute best impression of underwater ninjas. The dolphins reportedly found them anyway. The account is fascinating, although it should be treated separately from the Navy's official documentation because some of its more dramatic claims — particularly stories about weaponized dolphins — remain disputed. (Navy SEALs)

The part that isn't disputed is impressive enough.

Dolphins come equipped with biological sonar — echolocation — that allows them to detect and discriminate objects in difficult underwater environments where visibility can be practically nonexistent. The Navy says this makes them exceptionally useful for finding mines and other objects in the water column or buried along the sea floor. California sea lions bring a different résumé to the interview: excellent underwater vision, directional hearing and the ability to repeatedly dive to substantial depths. (Navy SEALs)

Which means somewhere in America there is presumably a dolphin whose LinkedIn profile could read:

Skills: sonar, mine detection, counter-infiltration, open-ocean operations, teamwork.

Weaknesses: fish.

The animals aren't merely laboratory curiosities, either. Navy documentation says Marine Mammal Program teams have been deployed into combat zones during both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. An earlier operational system was used for swimmer defence in Vietnam, while later marine-mammal teams were deployed in the Persian Gulf and supported military operations connected to Iraq. (Navy Integrated Warfare Center Pacific)

They also participate in military exercises. During RIMPAC 2018, for example, Navy bottlenose dolphins belonging to the Mark 7 Marine Mammal System performed mine-countermeasure training off Southern California. The Navy's own environmental documentation describes trained dolphins and sea lions operating with small boats, crews and SCUBA personnel to detect specified underwater objects. (U.S. Navy)

And these animals are apparently absurdly good at their jobs.

In 2013, two Navy dolphins conducting a routine training exercise off San Diego detected something buried in the seabed. Divers went down expecting another training-related object and instead uncovered pieces of a Howell torpedo dating from the 1800s, lost by USS Iowa during an exercise in 1899. More than a century after the Navy lost the thing, the dolphins found it. (Naval History and Heritage Command)

I feel this deserves a moment.

Humans: “We have no idea where that torpedo went.”

Dolphin, 114 years later: click click click.

“There.”

One of the more interesting parts of the program is that the animals routinely work untethered in the ocean. According to an account describing Navy Marine Mammal Systems, dolphins and sea lions can be transported by ship, aircraft, helicopter or vehicle, released into open water to perform their assignment, and trained to return to their handlers afterward. (Navy SEALs)

Basically, the Navy owns military personnel who could leave whenever they want.

They just come back.

Naturally, a program involving military dolphins has accumulated some spectacular rumours over the decades. Stories have claimed dolphins were trained to carry explosives, stab enemy divers, deliver poison or act as underwater suicide bombers. The Navy has repeatedly denied training marine mammals as offensive weapons, arguing that their roles are detection, marking, recovery and interdiction rather than independently deciding whom to kill. (Smithsonian Magazine)

There are nevertheless historical accounts from former military personnel describing exercises in which dolphins located SEAL divers and simulated attacks against them, including claims involving simulated CO₂ devices. Those stories are part of the mythology — and possibly part of the classified history — surrounding the program, but they shouldn't be confused with what the Navy publicly confirms. (Navy SEALs)

Frankly, the confirmed version is wild enough.

We have stealth aircraft, nuclear submarines, autonomous underwater vehicles, satellite surveillance and machine-learning systems capable of analyzing oceans of data.

And after sixty years of technological advancement, the United States Navy is still looking at a bottlenose dolphin and saying:

“Yeah. We can't build anything quite like that yet.”

Nature: undefeated.

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Sources

U.S. Navy / Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific — overview of the Marine Mammal Program and its deployments in Vietnam and Iraq. (Navy Integrated Warfare Center Pacific)

Office of Naval Research — history of the program and current use of bottlenose dolphins and California sea lions. (ONR)

U.S. Navy — Marine Mammal Program mine-clearance operations during RIMPAC. (U.S. Navy)

U.S. Navy environmental documentation — description of dolphins and sea lions working alongside SCUBA personnel in mine-hunting and object-recovery systems. (Navy Environmental Protection Agency)

Naval History and Heritage Command — Navy dolphins discover the lost 1899 Howell torpedo. (Naval History and Heritage Command)

U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings — history of marine mammals used for harbour and swimmer defence during Vietnam. (U.S. Naval Institute)

National Geographic — overview of Navy dolphins' mine-detection and intruder-detection abilities. (National Geographic)

NavySEALs.com — historical account of SEAL combat divers training against Marine Mammal Program dolphins, including the more controversial claims surrounding simulated attacks. (Navy SEALs)

I deliberately separated the documented Navy program from the juicy “attack dolphin” stories, because there really is enough verified weirdness here that we don't need to accidentally turn a former-SEAL anecdote into established fact.

                                                                                 

Ways Carney Supports the U.S. While Telling Us Otherwise.

 Researched and written by ChatGPT

Mark Carney talks frequently about Canadian sovereignty, Canadian economic independence and reducing Canada's dependence on the United States.

Here are the actions.

• His former company moved its asset-management head office from Toronto to New York while he was still chairman. Brookfield Asset Management announced the relocation in 2024. A December 2024 corporate circular signed by Carney as board chair listed BAM's head office at 250 Vesey Street in New York. Carney left Brookfield in January 2025. (Bloomberg) (Reuters)

• Brookfield said the move would improve its access to U.S. capital markets and U.S. stock indexes. The company noted that the largest shares of its revenue, assets under management, employees and institutional investors were already in the United States.

• Carney's disclosed investment account was overwhelmingly invested in U.S. companies by company count. The ethics disclosure contained 567 companies in a professionally managed investment account. An independent count found 515 American companies — about 90.8% — and four Canadian companies, about 0.71%. The disclosure does not reveal dollar amounts, so this is a count of holdings, not 90.8% of the portfolio's dollar value. Carney also did not personally choose the individual securities in this third-party-managed account. (Office of the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner)

• Carney's wife works for a U.S. consulting firm. Diana Fox Carney is a senior adviser to Eurasia Group, a political-risk consultancy headquartered in New York.

• That U.S. company has also received Canadian federal government contracts. Eurasia Group has provided geopolitical research and consulting services to the Government of Canada, including Natural Resources Canada.

• Carney removed Canadian tariffs from $44.2 billion worth of U.S. imports. The retaliatory tariffs were removed September 1, 2025.

• American tariffs on major Canadian sectors remained when Canada removed those counter-tariffs. U.S. measures affecting Canadian steel, aluminum and automobiles were not simultaneously eliminated.

• Carney cancelled Canada's Digital Services Tax after pressure from Washington. His government explicitly said the decision was made to advance trade negotiations with the United States.

• The cancellation primarily benefited large multinational digital companies, including major U.S. technology companies.

• The tax wasn't simply stopped going forward. It was repealed retroactively. Companies that had already paid it became eligible for refunds, with interest.

• Ottawa had expected billions of dollars from that tax. Federal estimates projected approximately $2.3 billion in its first fiscal year and roughly $900 million annually thereafter.

• Carney continued Canada's purchase of American-made F-35 fighter jets. Canada remains committed to purchasing at least the first 16 Lockheed Martin F-35s.

• The first Canadian F-35s are being delivered to Arizona rather than Canada. They will initially operate from Luke Air Force Base for Canadian pilot training.

• Carney accelerated Canada's NATO defence-spending timetable by seven years. Canada had planned to reach the alliance's 2%-of-GDP benchmark by 2032. Carney moved it to 2025–26.

• That fulfilled a longstanding U.S. demand that Canada substantially increase military spending.

• Carney's government allowed qualifying U.S.-assembled vehicles into Canada without Canada's retaliatory auto tariff.

• His government also granted tariff relief to U.S. goods used by Canadian manufacturers, including automotive and aerospace producers.

• Carney's automotive strategy continues to call for a deeply integrated North American auto industry rather than separation from the United States.

None of these facts proves that every Carney policy benefits the United States. Some of his government's policies clearly conflict with Washington, particularly as the Canada-U.S. trade dispute intensified in 2026.

But when assessing political rhetoric, words are only one part of the record.

The other part is where the jobs went.

Where the headquarters went.

Where the investments went.

Which taxes disappeared.

Which tariffs disappeared.

Which companies received the business.

Which weapons Canada continued buying.

Actions are considerably easier to measure than speeches.

                                                                                 

                                                                                         

  

                                                                            

Canadian Wine Is Cheaper in America — Even With a 50% Tariff.

Researched and written by ChatGPT

Canadians are constantly being told how damaging American tariffs are to our businesses.

So explain this.

Ron Kubek, co-owner of Lightning Rock Winery in Summerland, British Columbia, recently laid out what happens to one of his bottles of rosé.

His wholesale price: $20.

The United States has now imposed an additional 50% tariff on certain Canadian alcoholic beverages, effective August 22, 2026. That adds roughly $10 to Kubek’s $20 bottle.

Price after the U.S. tariff: about $30.

Now send that same Canadian wine to Ontario.

Kubek says its LCBO wholesale price becomes $38.17.

In Quebec, through the SAQ: $43.66.

Read that again.

A Canadian wine can enter the United States carrying a 50% American tariff and still have a lower wholesale price than it does in Ontario.

How?

Ontario's own LCBO documents provide a pretty good explanation.

Beginning April 1, 2026, the LCBO's wholesale markup on wine between 7.1% and 18% alcohol is 68% of landed cost.

Then there are additional charges and HST. The LCBO itself describes its pricing formula as:

landed cost + wholesale markup + applicable charges + deposit + HST.

That 68% Ontario markup alone turns a $20 cost into $33.60 before the remaining charges and HST are added.

Kubek's reported $38.17 Ontario wholesale price suddenly isn't mysterious at all.

So What Are We Actually Protecting Canadians From?

Foreign tariffs?

Or our own governments?

Because while politicians warn Canadians about Americans making Canadian goods more expensive, we have constructed our own system in which a bottle produced in British Columbia can cost substantially more to enter the Ontario market than it does to cross an international border carrying a punitive American tariff.

That's not American policy.

That's Canadian policy.

And perhaps Canadians deserve a much more honest conversation about why we are told to fear trade barriers erected by other countries while enormous government-created barriers remain standing right here at home.

The numbers aren't conspiracy theory.

They're published.

And once again, the story we've been sold looks considerably different when somebody actually checks the receipt.

                                                                            

Walmart and the Opioid Epidemic: That’ll Be $50 Million, Please. Your Dollar Is Your Conscience.

 Researched and written by ChatGPT

Walmart has agreed to pay $50 million to settle a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit alleging its pharmacies illegally filled thousands of opioid and other controlled-substance prescriptions.

And the details are ugly.

According to the DOJ, Walmart’s own pharmacists repeatedly warned the company about doctors they believed were operating as “pill mills.” Those warnings included thousands of refusal-to-fill reports. Yet the government alleged that Walmart’s corporate compliance team continued allowing prescriptions from some of those prescribers to be filled.

The DOJ says pharmacists encountered glaring red flags: dangerous drug combinations, repeated high-dose opioid prescriptions, early refill requests and prescriptions written by already-suspect doctors. The original 2020 lawsuit alleged Walmart’s conduct contributed to the opioid epidemic and involved hundreds of thousands of Controlled Substances Act violations.

Perhaps the most revealing detail comes from an internal email quoted by the government. Rather than spending management time analyzing pharmacists’ refusal reports, a Walmart compliance director reportedly described “driving sales and patient awareness” as a better use of their time.

On August 28, 2026, Walmart settled the federal case for $50 million without admitting liability. It must also strengthen monitoring of controlled-substance dispensing and establish a hotline for reporting suspected illegal dispensing.

And this isn’t Walmart’s first enormous opioid settlement. In 2022, the company agreed to pay roughly $3.1 billion to resolve opioid claims brought by states and local governments.

For years we were told the opioid catastrophe was about irresponsible patients, crooked doctors and street dealers.

Turns out there were some very large corporate cash registers in the middle of it too.

                                                                            

Dr. Meryl Nass Wouldn’t Toe the COVID Line. So Maine’s Medical Board Ordered a Psychiatric Evaluation.

 Researched and written by ChatGPT

You really couldn’t make this stuff up.

Dr. Meryl Nass, a Maine physician with decades of experience and no prior disciplinary history, became one of the doctors who openly challenged the official COVID narrative, questioned public-health policy, and prescribed treatments including ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine when much of the medical establishment had decided those drugs were apparently too dangerous to even discuss without clutching its pearls.

And what did Maine’s Board of Licensure in Medicine do?

Among other things, it ordered her to undergo a neuropsychological evaluation by a Board-selected psychologist and suspended her medical licence.

Because nothing screams “science” quite like responding to professional dissent with, essentially, “Perhaps you need your head examined.”

That psychiatric-evaluation order has now come back to bite them.

In October 2025, Maine Superior Court vacated the order, finding it “arbitrary and capricious.” Then, on August 20, 2026, a federal judge allowed important portions of Nass’s civil-rights lawsuit against members of the medical board to move forward.

And the judge’s comments are worth reading carefully.

Chief U.S. District Judge Lance Walker noted that there was apparently no evidence that Nass suffered from drug abuse, alcohol abuse, or a physical condition that impaired her ability to practise medicine. So why, exactly, was a psychiatric evaluation necessary?

That leaves an awfully uncomfortable question hanging in the air.

Was the Board suggesting that her opinions themselves were evidence of some kind of mental condition?

Or, as Judge Walker put it, was the Board simply “making an example out of Dr. Nass”?

That is a hell of a sentence to find in a federal court ruling about a medical regulator.

Walker went further, writing that a medical licensing board had “no need to conduct itself in this manner at all,” and that imposing an unsupported psychological evaluation without ordinary judicial protections “simply ought not occur, ever.”

Ever.

Which feels fairly definitive.

Now, before the fact-check brigade reaches for smelling salts, this does not mean Dr. Nass has won every part of every legal fight connected to the case. Some claims were dismissed, others remain alive, and Maine’s disciplinary proceedings involved allegations beyond her public disagreement with COVID policy.

But the psychiatric-evaluation episode stands on its own, and it should bother people regardless of what they think about ivermectin, vaccines, lockdowns, masks, Anthony Fauci, or anything else from that deeply normal and completely non-hysterical period of recent history.

Because the issue here is bigger than Meryl Nass.

If a physician challenges prevailing medical orthodoxy, the proper response is evidence, debate, peer disagreement, professional review, and transparent due process.

It is not: “Maybe she’s crazy.”

That is not science.

That is institutional power protecting itself.

During COVID, we were endlessly told to “trust the science,” as though science were a priesthood delivering commandments from a mountaintop rather than a method built around questioning, testing, arguing, revising, and sometimes discovering that yesterday’s certainty was wrong.

Doctors who stepped outside the approved script were mocked, censored, investigated, threatened professionally, and in some cases treated as though dissent itself were proof of incompetence.

Meryl Nass’s case gives us a rather ugly glimpse of what that mindset can look like when bureaucrats have regulatory power behind them.

The most important phrase to come out of this case may be the simplest:

Dissent is not a diagnosis.

And no medical board should ever be allowed to pretend otherwise.