I'm super dubious about their conclusions here. Fat people drink diet soda because they are trying to avoid sugar. Diet soda actually tastes damn good these days, there isn't really a reason to drink regular soda.
They are trying to replicate the assault on your taste buds that is sugar soda. They've gotten pretty good at it.
The problem is that the levels of sweetness, acidity, salinity, carbonation etc. in diet soda have become normalized. People give these dessert drinks to children, and drink it like it's water.
You know how overpoweringly strong some chocolate mousse can be? The kind where you can't finish a tiny slice of cake because more than a tiny sliver on your fork is too rich? Or how some foreign cuisines can be so potently dosed with curry or pepper that you can't taste any other flavors in the dish? Imagine replacing white bread throughout your diet with that chocolate cake. Or the punch of salt and pepper on an egg with that level of curry.
Ask someone from 100 years ago to sweeten a glass of lemonade "to taste" and you'd get something so weak that a consumer of diet soda would mock it like the meme "hint of hint of lime" or "transported on a truck near strawberries" flavors of LaCroix.
Yes it's better that they drink diet than regular soda. No, it's not good to normalize that flavor. I think human appetites are just not set up to handle some stimuli that previous levels of foraging or farming, chemistry, and distribution systems could not create.
> Ask someone from 100 years ago to sweeten a glass of lemonade "to taste" and you'd get something so weak that a consumer of diet soda would mock it like the meme "hint of hint of lime" or "transported on a truck near strawberries" flavors of LaCroix.
This is quiet a suspicious claim if you've studied food or beverage history. We have cocktail recipes dating back 150 years, and punch recipes dating back almost 500. They are almost universally sweeter than today. Similarly food recipes also used a good deal more sugar. Some of this was no doubt to cover off flavors, less sweet varieties, and for the preservative power of sugar. You're going to need some citations that the normalization is the problem behavior.
> The most common style today is Brut [(6 to 12 grams of sugar per litre)]. However, throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th century Champagne was generally much sweeter than it is today. Moreover, except in Britain, Champagne was drunk as dessert wines (after the meal), rather than as table wines (with the meal).[55] At this time, Champagne sweetness was instead referred to by destination country, roughly as:[56]
> - Goût anglais ("English taste", between 22 and 66 grams); note that today goût anglais refers to aged vintage Champagne
> - Goût américain ("American taste", between 110 and 165 grams)
> - Goût français ("French taste", between 165 and 200 grams)
> - Goût russe ("Russian taste", between 200 and 300 grams)
By way of comparison, my favourite Orange Muscat dessert wine has 110 g/l sugar [2], a bog-standard ruby port has 102 g/l [3], my favourite sweet-ish sherry has a svelte 50 g/l [4], and a decent PX has an excruciating 417 g/l [5]. So Americans and the French alike used to drink champagne that was considerably sweeter than today's fortified and dessert wines!
I think this might have to do with sugar being more expensive.
Today sugary drinks are associated with poverty, lack of self-control, lack of education. Champagne is a status signaling drink, you don't want to signal that.
I think normalization is the problem but not because people didn't drink sweet things; my suspicion is that previously they were drunk rarely and in smaller quantities (due to cost, if nothing else).
We've gone from "Twelve full ounces, that's a lot" to a 12oz can being the smallest commonly available size, and a 20oz bottle being common in vending machines.
Over my lifetime, the "medium" size soda at a fast-food restaurant has roughly doubled.
Nope. Both Coke Zero and Pepsi Max(I guess that's what you mean by Black) are just awful, different to Diet but still bad - but I feel the same about literally any drink sweetened with aspartame/acesulfam/sucralose though. I can't imagine drinking a can of any of these - but I'll happily have a regular coke.
Some caveats for others who don't want to read the study.
1. This is a study done on rats and is only a single study, so caveat emptor.
2. They administer 250mg/kg/d Aspartame (human recommended max dose is 50mg/kg/d) based on the claim that "Species correction required a five to six times higher dose in rats than humans, as rats metabolize aspartame faster than humans"
3. Even if you assume effects correlate perfectly to humans, a dosage of 50mg/kg/d in the average American 90kg male corresponds to 22.5 12-oz cans of Diet Coke (200 mg Aspartame) per day for 30 days straight (length of the study).
4. There was a group of rats fed Aspartame at those levels for 1 month, then left to recover for 1 month. The sciatic nerve in these rats recovered significantly, and although it appears the recovery was incomplete, they also state that this difference is not statistically significant. There is also no discussion about whether recovery over a time period > 1 month would have resulted in complete recovery.
Skimmed through the text, and I'm fairly convinced (haven't drank Diet Coke in months), but I'd like to see a fourth group administered high fructose corn syrup and/or other artificial sweeteners.
> Diet soda actually tastes damn good these days, there isn't really a reason to drink regular soda.
I've been wondering about that. I wasn't sure if my memory has faded or maybe drinking it often made me like the taste but these days I find Diet Coke/Coke Zero to be equally enjoyable as Coke. Have the taste of the non-sugar Coke been steadily modified?
The last time I tried Coke Zero, it tasted like Diet RC. I didn't like it at all.
Diet Coke has huge differences in flavor between sources and packaging options. It's universally bad out of a can or bottle, and the stuff from soda fountains varies by restaurant.
The problem is that the levels of sweetness, acidity, salinity, carbonation etc. in diet soda have become normalized. People give these dessert drinks to children, and drink it like it's water.
You know how overpoweringly strong some chocolate mousse can be? The kind where you can't finish a tiny slice of cake because more than a tiny sliver on your fork is too rich? Or how some foreign cuisines can be so potently dosed with curry or pepper that you can't taste any other flavors in the dish? Imagine replacing white bread throughout your diet with that chocolate cake. Or the punch of salt and pepper on an egg with that level of curry.
Ask someone from 100 years ago to sweeten a glass of lemonade "to taste" and you'd get something so weak that a consumer of diet soda would mock it like the meme "hint of hint of lime" or "transported on a truck near strawberries" flavors of LaCroix.
Yes it's better that they drink diet than regular soda. No, it's not good to normalize that flavor. I think human appetites are just not set up to handle some stimuli that previous levels of foraging or farming, chemistry, and distribution systems could not create.