[n4r9]

Thanks for sharing. Diet soft drinks get a bad rap but are imo an incredibly useful tool for health. I can probably count on my fingers how many standard soda drinks I had in 2024, compared to 1 or 2 diet soda drinks per day on average. I get the enjoyment of something sweet, fizzy and with a kick, but without the calories. And they're often just as tasty; in fact, I'm not sure I can even taste the difference today between Dr Pepper standard and Dr Pepper Zero.

[tombert]

I grew up with it, so I actually prefer Diet Coke over regular Coke at this point. I don't remember the last time I just had a can of regular sugary soda...it's been awhile.

That said, I will acknowledge that the relatively-consequence-free nature of Diet Coke makes it a lot more addictive to me. It's much easier for me to drink Diet Coke every day, and lots of it, because I know that the likelihood of me actually facing a short-term consequence from it is relatively small.

At least now, I've transitioned away from the caffeine, so the only thing I really need to worry about is the sweeteners, which seem to be "mostly harmless" from the research I've done, so maybe I don't need to go any further.

[antisthenes]

> Diet soft drinks get a bad rap but are imo an incredibly useful tool for health.

If you have diet sodas on one hand and obesity on the other, they're definitely the lesser evil. But that's also a pretty low bar, since obesity is THE co-morbidity factor for just about everything.

[n4r9]

As far as I can tell, they're by far a lesser evil. There seems to be two health arguments against diet soda: that they can erode teeth and that they can degrade insulin function. The first of these is just as true for - say - eating an orange, and can be combatted by drinking or rinsing with water afterwards. The second is still a subject of research.