> People who consumed the most sweeteners experienced declines in their thinking and memory skills 62% faster than those with the lowest intake, the researchers found.

It's not possible to understand what that percentage is supposed to mean because we don't know what dose rates they're talking about. On the face of it, the percentage makes no sense at all, but if the study is real and of good quality then there's very likely some lost nuance that changes the meaning of the figure.

This sort of thing, by the way, is why every scientist I've ever worked with really hates popular reporting of their studies. Nuance and detail are almost always lost, so they're rarely reported correctly and people end up thinking the results were something very different than what they actually were.

Then "science" gets blamed for being silly, when in fact it's the reporting.