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Comment by sgt | Hacker News Reader

Never saw the point of diet sodas. I'd much rather drink normal coke with proper sugar in it. It's unhealthy, yes - so drink slightly less.

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Well, if you wanted to match the glycemic load of a diet soda you would have to drink 100% less, i.e. not at all, not 'slightly less'. Drinking less sugary soda is not a comparable alternative to drinking diet soda, even if you prefer it. So saying diet sodas are pointless on that basis seems a bit non-sequitur. Also consider that 10% of the US population has type 2 diabetes, and almost 40% are prediabetic.

This is my life motto: eat well but portion wisely. I like butter. I like sugar. I like McDonalds, and cream, and cheese. So I eat these things, but only in moderation. I don't worry about trying to trick my tastebuds into thinking food tastes good. To me, artificial sweeteners taste bitter and wholly unpleasant. I would rather just drink water than drink diet soda. Indeed, I drink soda very rarely now, but once every few weeks a real coca cola is quite delicious.

> So I eat these things, but only in moderation

I've found this is difficult for me. It's much easier to not eat those foods at all than to hope to only eat "a little".

A mitigation is only buying very small packs, but that's not always practical.

Good point. I still struggle with myself not to eat the whole packet. I guess I've grown to enjoy the battle of wills and the sense of satisfaction of winning each time.

I switched from drinking exclusively sugar soda to exclusively sugar-free soda, and very quickly ended up preferring the taste of the latter. But I also discovered that non-sugar sweeteners feel a lot… lighter? They're easier to drink, simply put; my body knows it's not sugar somehow. I also have discovered I don't like the sugar rush, feeling on the teeth or aftertaste of a sugary soda.

> But I also discovered that non-sugar sweeteners feel a lot… lighter?

My theory: diet soda has no high fructose corn syrup, so it feels thinner (less viscous and sticky).

I live in the EU, so my reference point is sucrose (normal sugar). But I think it makes it more syrupy, yeah.

The non-diet ones become way too sweet for you once you stop drinking them for a while.

> so drink slightly less

But this is the whole difficulty about it. It's very hard to stick to a diet when there is so much temptation in the world. If you can have your aspartame cake and eat it, why wouldn't you?

Sugary soda is associated with no better or worse health outcomes than diet soda. In fact both are similarly bad for you.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

Surely 40g of sugar if you do not need all that energy is worse than 0g of sugar.

Almost every advancement in dietary knowledge I have see over my life has indicated more and more that excess sugar (and carbs in general) is by far the biggest problem all over the world. And it is trivial to consume excess carbs with a modern lifestyle in a developed country.

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