A clinical dietitian here; agree with you completely about aspartame, and caution even more strongly against sugar. Sugar-free foods being dangerous doesn't mean people ought to resort to plain ol' sugar, which messes up with our blood glucose and insulin, causes an insulin rush and glucose dive and thus contributes to depression as well. It's so very, very important to make sure your loved ones are eating well during a difficult time - good, healthy, natural, wholesome foods. Refined sugar, artificial sweeteners and food coloring are all poison.
along with the depression from insulin rush it causes weight gain as well and weight issues are a big contribute to depression. The way i feel about it is god gave us everything we need to survive when he created earth and in the BC days people lived much much longer than we do now. technology is getting smarter and we think that all these easy to do convenient things like processed foods, to make more use out of a slaughtered animal is a great thing but in the end it is actually shortening our lives. and the worst of it is most processed meats are turned into foods that are most fed to our children like chicken nuggets and hot dogs, all the things kids love to eat. and cutting out processed foods from a diet can cause a person to become very sick its like withdrawing from a drug. I can 100% agree that changing a diet is hard especially if you are depressed because we all have that one food that brings us joy and comfort and we cant imagine never having it again. I'm sure as a nutritionist you will agree that changing your diet to our natural foods, can actually change the way you feel, your body will be able to function the way it is suppose to instead of relying on the bad foods that makes us feel good when we eat them but actually do more harm than good in the ling run.
Yes, of course weight gain and diabetes are the next step, I was only talking short-term.
