SWEET AND LOWDOWN SAFETY CAN BE A BITTER PILL.

Byline: Stephanie Becker Local View

I am taking the latest good and bad news about food with a grain of salt.

First, what Italian researchers say is the bitter truth: The sugar substitute aspartame causes cancer.

Now the sweet news, compliments of 20 other Italians: Dark chocolate lowers blood pressure.

What's making all this hard to swallow is a recent study from Greece. A researcher there found that one-third of all scientific studies touted in the big medical journals turn out to be wrong or blown out of proportion. Imagine if you had that kind of success rate at work. Unless you're a weather forecaster or a studio executive, a 33 percent success rate would have you pounding the pavement in no time.

Some of the more spectacular flip-flops include hormone replacements for menopausal women, which, instead of protecting against heart disease, cause it.

Vitamin E apparently doesn't prevent heart attacks.

And the spectacular health benefits from antioxidants in tea and wine really needed to be watered down.

So, when the most recent reports came out, I wasn't going to bite. Especially since the one on chocolate reported benefits only with the dark variety. That's the yucky kind that doesn't really taste too good, so who cares? Call me when Snickers prevents acne and cellulite.

But the study about aspartame is giving me the feeling of deja vu all over again.

It was only a few years ago that the feds lifted their warning against my then-favorite carcinogen of choice - saccharin. Before the government's reversal, I practically main-lined Sweet'n Low, despite the danger. As a woman who was born to be mild, I finally knew the freedom of those who ride Harleys without helmets, drive their cars without seat belts and go swimming moments after eating.

Sadly though, that sense of freedom and rebellion was snatched away when saccharin got a clean bill of health. Seems that the warning was a result of a Canadian study that oversold the risk by over-feeding tiny little lab rats a gargantuan amount of saccharin - the human equivalent of drinking 800 cans of diet soda a day for a lifetime.

Who'd have the time to suck down so much soda? Think of the belching? There'd be enough gas to heat Montreal for a year. Big surprise when the rats got bladder cancer.

So, 25 years after the warning was issued, saccharin was declared safe for democracy.

Now I can once again have a taste of danger, replacing my pink packet with the blue one and the current warning that my new favorite sweetener could cause cancer.

That death-defying thrill is back.

Now, each morning, terrified yet exhilarated, I let the microscopic grains of artificial sweetener dissolve slowly into my mug: ``Double, double, toil and one gram of a government tested artificial sweetener could cause trouble.'' Besides, I was promised a sweetness 200 times that of sugar. Is there some sort of scale? Like Jessica Simpson is two times sweeter than sugar, Debbie Reynolds is 50 times sweeter than sugar, and 500 times sweeter is Kelly without Regis (which could leave you in a diabetic coma).

I know I should heed the latest studies, like the one recently released that says to take the herbal cold remedy echinacea with a healthy dose of skepticism. Seems the herb may literally be nothing to sneeze at, since a limited study found it doesn't cure or prevent colds.

So I'm hedging my bets.

I'm putting aspartame in my coffee, with dark chocolate powder, and sucking down an echinacea tablet while wearing a surgical mask.

Oh, and by the way, the author of that Greek research paper that found so many studies were wrong acknowledged that - you guessed it - he could be wrong, too.