I have become a diet pop freak. I used to only drink a pop here and there, now I have over 5 12-packs of diet pop in my fridge at all times. Is diet pop bad for you? If so, what do you suggest I drink? Kool Aid? Mango nectar? Gatorade? What?
(Soft drinks only please. If I feel like having a barley pop, I can swill down a couple Buds.)
It’s mostly water, a little artificial sweetener, and CO[sub]2[/sub]. Artificial sweeteners are not good for you, but not particularly bad for you, either.
Gatorade has a lot of sugar, so it’s not the best beverage unless you’re really working out.
I’ve found myself getting hooked on Diet Pepsi Vanilla. I go through a 12-pack in two or three days. I sure hope it’s not bad for you.
I drink Diet Dr. Pepper constantly. My blood is brown and fizzy. No ill effects so far.
It’s SODA not pop!!! Ahhhh, sorry, I feel better now. Carry on.
Another Diet Pepsi Vanilla addict here, Andy. I can’t get enough of that stuff. I go through several twelve packs a week. I’d be a fatty if I drank the sugared stuff. Now that i think about it, the Diet stuff is sweet enough. Maybe that’s why I like it; it tastes like a sugared soft drink.
I’ve began to drink a lot of ‘diet’ (It’s not diet! It won’t make you slim!) soda too. I doubt it’ll kill me. I used to hate it.
BTW, I once drank a can of Vanilla Coke. Why is it called Vanilla? Because it smells a bit different?
The only ill effects that I noted in my years of diet coke binging were the standard too-much-caffine problems and, ahem, gassiness.
I asked specifically about kidney damage due to Diet Coke a while back. (The search isn’t working for me, but it was called “Is Diet Coke going to kill me?”, in General Questions.) I’m still pretty confident that it’s safe, based on the responses to that thread and a good bit of internet research, but there are some who disagree. There are some arguments against aspartame specifically, but none of them were at all convincing, IMHO.
It seems to me that the biggest health risk is the neurological effects of the caffeine. The 6 liters or so of Coke that I would drink per day has roughly the same amount of caffeine as 3-4 cups of coffee.
And here’s Cecil on the alleged dangers of aspartame.
Closing this thread and the request of the OP and referring further comments to his IMHO thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=210772
bibliophage
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