Jumping in, but sucralose tastes very clearly weird to me. Aspartame I had too long ago but probably tastes weird too since I avoided it afterwards. Monk fruit tastes a lot better but it can get overwhelmingly sweet to me. I tend to avoid sweeteners though, partially because of the taste and partially because they are new chemicals and potentially unhealthy.

Sweeteners are definitely an acquired taste. The few times I went on or off of them, it took about two weeks for my body to adjust, after which artificially sweetened beverages started tasting good, and those sweetened with sugar felt off - and then also two weeks to readjust the other way around.

Ultimately, sweeteners won me over, and I've been "on" them for the past 12 years. For me it's a simple matter: I dislike pure water, and have been drinking black tea instead ever since I was a single-digit aged kid - but I also can't stand unsweetened tea. Sweeteners save me from ingesting stupid amounts of sugar through drinking some 10 mugs of tea every day, as I used to long ago.

It's the taste, yeah. Frankly I don't care much about what's "healthy" and I consider that to be a bit of a buzzword as well as a rabbit hole. I do eat a lot of veggies, don't eat meat/dairy anymore, don't drink alcohol, but in my mind I'm not doing this to be some health-freak. Alcohol tastes bad, for example, and I have very low tolerance for that sort of thing. A lot of people will assume I'm religious (I'm not) or otherwise ascetic, but I'm actually just doing what I want. It keeps life more interesting. If we're to look at an energy drink as a fun thing, a pleasurable treat, I think sticking sucralose in there completely defeats the point. I can drink water if I'm thirsty, I can get caffeine from other sources. I wanted the energy drink because it was good. If you make it not good, I'm not going to drink it.