Symantics

I once heard an anecdote about a hotel guest and a porter with a spare key. The porter was at the wrong door with the key, and he said, "a key?". The guest pointed at the correct door and said, "Aquí!". This went on for a while. The point of this silly bilingual pun is that words are simple symbols. They have no meaning except the meaning we assign.
There are many web sites that will tell you that Aspartame (Nutrisweet) is "poison". High fructose corn syrup is also "poison". The meaning most of us have for poison is something that if consumed in sufficient quantities will cause death. Obviously billions of people each day drink these two ingredients. (I mean billions. Think of all the people around the world. It seems like a reasonable guess.) I have never heard of one person dying from either of these.
I think the meaning of poison may be the problem. If a poison is a substance that causes negative health impact, maybe we could agree. There is some evidence that both Aspartame and high fructose corn syrup cause some problems in some people. I don't know a better word, but poison is not right. Toxin may be closer, but it is still synonymous with poison to most people.
So when people try to sound an alarm that things are bad for us, they should avoid poison or toxin and simply say what the effects are. Otherwise most people will ignore them.