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Comment by sooper | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious, when you say "Just find something else to drink, ideally which isn’t fizzy", do you include fizzy water?

I only ask as I bought a sodastream machine after realising what I liked most about soda was the fizz - I actively disliked the sweetness. Now I drink around 3 litres of fizzed water a day and haven't looked back.

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I think whatever works as a substitute as long as it helps keep you away from the sweetened drinks (artificially or otherwise) is a win. For non-diet sweetener the 150 calories is basically burning the majority of any deficit you might have had that day, and if it's artificial sweetener... well two things;

1) I'm just paranoid what that could be doing to your gut bacteria,

2) It's keeping your taste buds acclimated to that hardcore sweet flavor (sucrose), which is something you have to train yourself off of, in my experience, to increase your sensitivity to the natural sweet which comes in the healthier options.

It might be different for a person who was drinking a liter of soda daily. As someone who never drank a lot of soda, I switched to carbonated water when I wanted something more, but didn't want sugar. My significant other (who regularly drinks soda) says carbonated water just tastes "bitter".

It is definitely acquired. I got some Pellegrino but it was bitter, but I had a case to kill, so I drank it anyway. All of a u sudden, it stopped being bitter, and became refreshing.

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