Giving people way more sugar than anyone normally eats in a day can make them sick — but that doesn’t mean normal sugar intake is harmful.

When people eat or drink things with low-calorie sweeteners like they normally do, studies show it doesn’t hurt their health.

Some studies say drinking sugary sodas is linked to weight gain and health problems, but eating sugar in foods like candy or cake doesn’t seem to have the same effect—so maybe how you consume sugar matters more than how much you eat.

If you swap sugar for artificial sweeteners, you’ll eat less sugar—by a lot—but if you drink water instead, you get the same low sugar intake, so the sweeteners don’t help any more than water does.

Using sugar-free sweeteners doesn’t make you eat more fat or protein than if you used regular sugar or just drank water—so their main job is just to cut down carbs and calories.

Scientists often give animals way more sugar than people normally eat—sometimes more than half their calories—and use pure fructose, which isn’t how humans usually consume sugar. So, the results from these animal studies might not apply to real human diets.