nothing in nature comes close. In the old days, kids thought strawberries were a giant treat because they're one of the sweetest things around. A strawberry tastes barely sweet at all when your palette has been ruined by hypersweet bullshit like Crystal Light. We didn't want my son to develop a sweet tooth at the age of 2.  Context for readers: a pound of strawberries is 130 calories.  That's less than most twelve-ounce cans of soda. At least she wasn't giving them full-sugar Kool-Aid.  The sugar would fatten them up a lot quicker and be a petri dish for the bacteria that cause tooth decay.  With artificial sweeteners, the main problem is a drink being acidic but otherwise they aren't nearly as bad as calorie-containing stuff from a dental perspective.