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Comment by Roritharr | Hacker News Reader

Coke reentered my life with their new Coke Zero formula. I sincerely love it, I just hope science will come up with a cure for the horrible disease this will eventually induce in me.

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Relevant Onion article:

https://www.theonion.com/man-who-drinks-5-diet-cokes-per-day...

That's a great article. Really describes how we Americans really are, and how we expect some modern marvel for whatever ails us. Really explains how snake oil salesman are allowed to exist.

Snake oil salesmen are documented as far back as history goes, and in preliterate societies. I wouldn't look to "American culture" or "modern marvels" for explanations.

Not just Americans...

Yup that's where I blatantly stole the joke from, it's a great one too as it fit my situation perfectly at the time.

Stupid question: what medical ailment do you reliably get from drinking 60 oz of Diet Coke every day? Frequent urination? Caffeine crashes?

Its about 75mg of caffeine per 20 oz of cola, so even at 60oz you’re not doing yourself any harm. While I don’t drink soda, I’d much rather drink 60oz of diet soda than what I see dozens of people drinking from Starbucks. Unless you’re popping No-Doze along with your cola, you’re not even approaching the potential harm of drinking a frappe’d sheet cake.

I only suggested that because I seem to get an unusually bad caffeine crash with sodas despite having moderate content, compared to coffee. Maybe it's just me.

I can think of a few reasons why that might be. You might typically drink more soda than coffee in a sitting, so you just might ingest more caffeine when you drink soda. It’s also possible that coffee has some alkaloids that moderate the release of caffeine into your system, the same way that tea and coffee do. Finally, you might drink varieties and brews of coffee with low caffeine, such as darker roasts and mild brews.

Do you mean the new Coke Zero Sugar in the US? I actually prefer the old version as the new one tastes a little more like Diet Coke.

I heard an ad for Coke Zero Sugar and grew confused over why they would add sugar to Coke Zero.

Sounds like you'll enjoy new Diet Coke Zero Sugar Zero then. All the flavor of Coke Zero Sugar but now without the sugar.

It needed a new name because it has a new recipe and flavor. Despite what indications you might get from the seeming random duration of shelf lives depicted on drink "best by" dates, sodas can easily spend a year or more in channel. So there had to be a clear indicator of whether you were getting the old or new drink.

I live in Germany, Coke Zero Sugar is what they called it. They changed the packaging a bid and ran some campaigns but by the amount I see it available everywhere it must have taken off.

I cant stand it either. Switched over to diet dr pep and got the benefit of having more caffeine too.

The sugar replacements might change your gut bacteria in the long term. You probably will not notice this for a long time until there are seemingly unrelated symptoms showing up.

They really figured out something good with Coke Zero. It somehow tastes better than Diet Pepsi without being nearly as sweet.

Last summer Coca Cola Zero Sugar was awesome last summer.

At that point I preferred it to even Pepsi Max.

Then later last year it went back to very ordinary IMO.

Alzheimers and stroke are the ailments that you might hope to be curable soon if that were the case.

The study to which you refer described a minor observational link, did not differentiate by ethnicity, age, or socioeconomic status, did not indicate what artificial sweeteners were under consideration, and--being sloppy but presumably at least baseline-honest researchers--made no indication that they believed there to be causation between diet soda drinking and these conditions.

Innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt works great for the justice system, not so much for your one shot at life.

Gonna put down that cell phone with its brain-altering radio waves? While you're at it, going to move out to Green Bank so you don't get Wi-Fi'd?

Lots of people believe lots of things that have no material backing. This one is no different from any other.

You like your cell phone. I like my Diet Pepsi. The overwhelming odds--both being evidence-of-absence situations because that bad study, of course, is not the only study that applies to artificial sweeteners--are that neither the radio in your cell phone or the sucralose in my Diet Pepsi are going to have much of an impact on either of us.

It seems to me that with the lack of resources, and inability to separate out cause and effect of many foods that effect our biology, the rational reaction is to adopt a sort of cargo cult mentality. If we really have no idea whether sucralose is good or bad for us over a long period (or which conditions it even could be good or bad for us), if you want to maximize your healthy outcomes you just avoid it. Its pretty incredible to me just how little we really know about optimizing diets except in extreme situations.

I sure am glad that updates on Alzheimer's and dementia research are regularly posted on HN! Sure gives an impression of progress.

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