Have a Coke and a Smile, If Ya Can.

Remember the old Coca ~ Cola commercials?

So you just gotta have your soda huh? Ok. And you drink Diet because you think that is a more appropriate way of handling your inability to just drink a glass of water and get over it. That is fine by me. But you know that you have to be aware of exactly what you’re chugging. One of the illustrious CrossFit 180 crew-members asked me to write a post that would truly scare the Diet Coke right out of her hands. Ok, here is the list of ingredients and what they really are.

Carbonated Water – Ok, this I don’t have a problem with unless you are struggling with dental woes.

High Fructose Corn Syrup – Glucse is enzymatically altered to make fructose. Yes, I love it when my food is enzymatically altered. I want my foods to be changed in many non-natural ways. Thanks for stepping up HFCS.

Caramel Color – is a stealthy ingredient. It is burnt carbohydrates. Yay! The soda company burns the carbs for us before we consume them so we wont have to burn them off with exercise. If only it really were that simply.

Phosphoric Acid – happens to be an excellent choice if you are trying to remove rust. Yummo! Well, I suppose you may indeed have an iron gut. Kudos to you. If that is not enough reason to love it, then appreciate the stellar job it does at weakening the bones in your body. You have strong muscles from CrossFit, so I am sure that will take care of those puny bones.

Natural Flavors – Yeah, right. And, I have some ice to sell to an Eskimo. Here and here are sites that will tell ya that there really is no such thing. If it were truly a natural ingredient, it would have been described with far more pride than a non-descript phrase that leads you into a Food Plan frenzy.

Caffeine – this stuff is the by-product of the work of the devil. It dehydrates you, sends your energy level falsely bounding and leaves you with no energy stores so you crash and burn. If that does not creep you out, let me tell you that it literally gets into your head. I mean your brain. It is digested by your tummy, sent through the blood stream and is then carried around and when that blood is in your brain, the caffeine hops off of its red blood cell chariot and reeks all sorts of science-y havoc. Got that? It gets into your brain. Blehk!

Aspartame (NutraSweet) – is a poser. It happened on accident. It was not intended to be the sweet thing that it is. A scientist was trying to make a drug and he messed up, licked his finger and decided he liked it well enough to call the mistake something yummy. Thanks doc! He was apparently a hard worker though. It took years to convince the US FDA that it would not cause brain cancer like they had originally thought. Way to stick with that mistake guys.

Potassium Benzoate – is a preservative. I think the coolest thing about it is how fun it is to actually say it out loud. Go ahead, Benzoate. Teeheehee. It is put in your soda because it is better known for keeping mold and bacteria from growing in your food than it is for being a source of Jamie’s entertainment. Well, that is not entirely true. It is also the chemical that makes fireworks whistle and that is very entertaining!

Citric acid – is actually a naturally occurring preservative and food flavoring agent found in citrus fruits. Unfortunately, it is linked to causing dental decay. Yay for a happy gal holding her Diet Coke and grinning from ear to ear with her jacked up grill. You go girl!

I had known about the bone loss associated with phosphoric acid. My solution used to be to take more Vitamin D and Calcium supplements. Yeah, that is the best way to handle the situation, right? And we have all been lectured about the crap caffeine pulls on our bodies.

Ok, ok. I have poked enough fun at the Diet Coke. I intentionally
wrote this with an inflammatory flair to accomplish the goal of freaking out the Diet Coke Crack Head. I would imagine that Diet Pepsi has a similar ingredients list, so please don't jump from the pot to the frying pan. I want you all to know that it was disturbing to research the ingredients; I had no idea what some of these things really are. Thanks for asking me to scare your soda away, I learned a lot. I stopped drinking Diet soda a year ago. Instead, I now drink an enormous volume of water, a few beers here and there, and a regular soda from time to time. To me, now that my tongue has lost familiarity with aspartame, it does not satisfy me in any way. If I am gonna chug, I am gonna CHUG. It tastes good! It is a Treat. Once in a while it is fine.

It you are about to climb the walls because I just took the Smile out of your soda, try chilled sparkling mineral water with crushed fruit. The fizzy will feel like the Diet Soda you long for, and the sweet from the fruit will help you with the twitch. I like a small orange, but I bet strawberry would be good too. Bottoms up!

Posts that are coming up:
The importance of rest and sleep, Peanuts, Food Labels, and Where I get my Info From. What else do you want to read about?