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Comment by teslabox | Hacker News Reader

> I also like that they lead with an image of Coke Zero, which has no sugar nor calories

This is sweetened with sucralose. In a recent study, fruit flies fed sucralose consumed more total calories than those fed sugar:

http://abc.net.au/news/2016-07-13/research-shows-artificial-...

Fruit juices have vitamins and minerals that soda does not. With that said, there's also a huge difference between the old herbal beverages (Cocaine & kola nut flavorings, "root beer", 21 natural plant flavors, etc), and modern artificially-colored and artificially-flavored concoctions.

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> This is sweetened with sucralose.

I have a can in front of me, it is sweetened with Acesulfame Potassium and Aspartame.

> In a recent study, fruit flies fed sucralose consumed more total calories than those fed sugar.

I'm not a fruit fly, and everything is a trade off. If this has been widely proven in human trials it'd be one thing.

> Fruit juices have vitamins and minerals that soda does not.

Vitamins and minerals are available in more than just fruit.

> artificially-colored and artificially-flavored

The Coke Zero in front of me has no artificial flavors listed, but is "caramel colored", so maybe that's artificial. Artificial doesn't inherently mean "bad for you".

You have to be a little careful with fruit juices; some are loaded with an equivalent or greater amount of sugar than CocaCola.

I seriously doubt that. Source?

Walk down the grocery store aisle and read the labels?

But here's a handful from the first page of Google search results:

http://time.com/103898/5-juices-with-more-sugar-than-soda/

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/11/childre...

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/06/09/319230765/fru...

I remember checking out of bottle of "Naked" juice and being astounded by the amount of sugar in a serving; 30-50g depending on the product.

But don't worry, they've got "NO SUGAR ADDED" printed right there on the label.

Fruits tend to have a lot of sugar and when you juice / concentrate them it only makes things worse on that front.

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