Diet Coke probably isn't a cognitive performance enhancer | Hacker News Reader

Diet Coke probably isn't a cognitive performance enhancer

dynomight.net

95 pointsGadiguibou134 comments

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Fun fact: Diet Coke has 34% more caffeine than regular Coke

https://www.coca-colacompany.com/faqs/what-is-caffeine#:~:te....

What a domain name. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like that.

Not a lot of companies have a dash in their name like that.

www.hy-vee.com

www.winndixie.com

www.coca-cola.com !!

It can be very helpful when providing clarity about where a word break should be. There's a reason that Experts Exchange uses http://www.experts-exchange.com rather than the hyphen-free version.

Let me check my spam folder - yeah, there are tons of phishing attempts with unusual combinations of hyphens, no hyphens, and company/inc/group that have similar amounts of legitimacy. A domain of coca-colacompany.com doesn't seem that unusual.

Oh, you mean the

    #:~:text=

URI fragment - yeah, that is weird! I wonder what the function of the :~ emoji is in their CMS. I know from painful experience that XML names can begin with a colon [1]; I fear that an identifier which is only a colon features prominently in their schema...

I also enjoyed the line at the bottom, in corporatese nonanswer to the question "Is caffeine addictive?"

> We know that not everyone drinks caffeine and not everyone wants to drink it all the time, so we also offer a range of caffeine-free beverages, including [insert local caffeine-free example] so people can make the choice for them and their families.

Someone in some committee vetoed 'including water', much to the chagrin of the Dasani and Smartwater reps in the meeting... or maybe they were duking it out with the new Aha guy and there was no clear winner yet.

[1] https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#NT-NameStartChar

It's not a CMS thing, it's a Chrome thing.[1] It highlights the text in the URI fragment when you click through to the page, and also auto-scrolls to that text.

[1] https://web.dev/text-fragments/

TIL! I'm a Firefox user, so didn't see anything.

It appears that Google Search has started to add those text fragments onto URLs in search results. Is there a setting or a browser extension that allows me to get rid of them?

Bing does it too

It's called a text fragment, and it's a draft standard: https://wicg.github.io/scroll-to-text-fragment/.

Great info on the fragment, but I was calling out the domain name for being "mixed kebab case". The half hyphenation is correct, but jarring.

I suspect this is to try to quantitatively match the stimulant effect of caffiene plus sugar/HFCS in the sweetened alternatives.

Alternately, the artificial sweetener might end up being too sweet, so they balance it out with some more bitter caffine.

My guess would've been the appetite suppressant qualities of caffeine.

Why would they do that instead of putting in less sweetener?

balancing out the acid maybe?

This is like the Three Body Problem, but with recipe ingredients!

I drink a lot of caffeine free diet coke now that I've developed a caffeine intolerance, and I think you're right. It doesn't have the bite without the caffeine and tastes kind of flat.

Am I the only one that experiences sugar as a depressant? Eating high glycemic index foods makes me lethargic and sleepy. I've never experienced a "sugar high". I also don't have diabetes as my blood sugar level is within norm during routine physicals.

Maybe you just get the insulin spike that deals with excess sugar in the blood much sooner which I think is what is supposed to make you sleepy. Probably should consider yourself lucky :)

Yes, this happens to me too. I can get maybe a maximum 15-20 minutes of increased cognitive performance after ingestion. Once that is over I become lethargic and afterwards a bit irate since my concentration dips.

It bothers me that people like Warren Buffet can go along their day ingesting copious amounts of coke normal and sweets and still be a functional productive human being.

When I used to work at big tech, we had a candy buffet in the kitchen and unlimited ice cream. This definitely lowered my work performance.

I would probably not leave the buffet in order to maintain my high… thankfully in small tech I’ve only been offered access to water and coffee.

Did they sell diabetes solutions? “Eat your own dog food”…

There's a theory out there that since your intestines have 'taste buds' for sugar, that eating artificial sweetener ends up increasing your body's ability to scavenge sugars from your digestive tract.

It's one of the working theories for a causative link between obesity and consumption of diet soda. Which is usually swamped by the correlative link between the two.

I'm curious about this theory. Do you mean by eating the same amount of food, artificial sweetener makes your body more efficient and increases your food utilization rate? For example instead of 80% of calorie now 90% of food is being used by the body? Looks like a good way to save food, you can just eat less for more.

That sounds like insulin resistance, not diabetes.

It is probably just overload for you - I get the same thing after a big big meal or a lot of sugar. But a small amount is another story. If you drank the original size of coke (which I think was 8 ounces?) you might have another reaction!

The amount definitely has an effect, but its a linear function where lethargy increases proportional to sugar intake.

Had that for years. Then got diagnosed with an autoimmune condition. Eliminating sugar is the number one thing that helps prevent flares for me.

Yeah same here. I feel like crap almost right away when I eat most anything with a decent amount of added sugars

Yep, me too! There is actually a link between high GI and sleepyness; orexin. It's a chemical messenger in the brain, and if you have very little of it, you have narcolepsy. If you have been injected or sprayed with a lot of it, you stay alert without sleep. Oh, and glucose inhibits orexin production!

My personal theory is that I have inherited a low base level of orexin, which makes me react with sleepyness to carbohydrates. I have no idea if this is accurate, though.

Maybe you could eliminate orexin as the cause if you ate a big meal and inhaled orexin, then noted if it lowered drowsiness (placebo affect aside)

Could potentially be reactive hypoglycemia:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetes/expe...

It could occur even if fasting blood glucose is still at normal levels.

Do you have ADHD? That's the typical reaction to stimulants.

I wonder if Im the only person who is triggered by this widespread over-simplification? Relaxed and focussed is not drowsy. Also totally within the normal spectrum of amphetamine effects for anyone, regardless of diagnosis. I always see people parroting this idea. Oh you have ADD so _those drugs_ just make you sleepy yeah? Id be bouncing off the walls, they'd say.

There is the well-known "sugar crash" but it sounds like you basically start the crash without any of the energy boost.

Sugar, despite popular belief, is not a stimulant (I’d have to pull up my Intro Psych textbook to find the citations on this, but it’s been deeply studied).

Similarly, it doesn't make kids hyper. That's probably just a side effect of the environment in which kids typically get candy. There was a study, but I don't know what it was called.

Coke Zero, on the other hand, has the same amount of caffeine as regular Coke, which makes me doubt this hypothesis.

Contrary to most opinions here, I lost weight through Diet Coke and diet drinks and kept it down thanks to it. These sodas (or rather the artificial sweeteners) allowed me to cut out sugar totally out of my diet at age 16 where I weighed 250 lbs at my highest, to 140 lbs at my lowest at age 21. Now I'm 30 years old at a healthy 160 lbs. I never worked out (still hate it) and only achieved this thanks to the dietary changes I was able to make through 0-calorie sweeteners. Perhaps my experience differs from other peoples, but I personally know 2-3 other people like me. Today, like most days, I drank at least 80 fl oz of diet soda and it never had a negative effect on me.

Do you drink water at all? Have you ever had a kidney stone?

I do drink water sometimes. But during the day, when I'm working or out at a restaurant it's 99% diet soda. I haven't tasted sugar based Coke in over 15 years because of my aversion against sugar.

Never had a kidney stone or anything like it.

Back when I was losing weight, I was fueled by caffeine, anxiety, and aspartame, so this checks out with my own experience. 270 to 180, sitting now around 205.

I did mostly cardio back then, but now lift weights. Switching to 0-calorie drinks has allowed me to better balance my diet for my personal wants/needs.

My story is pretty much identical, although some of the numbers are a bit different.

At 22 I was a massive 95 kg (210 lbs). I drank about 2 L of cola every day and decided commit myself to a "don't drink calories rule," and switched from regular Coke/Pepsi to Coke Zero/Pepsi Max. I made no other changes to my lifestyle and after 6-7 months was down to a non-overweight 70 kg (155 lbs).

16 years later (yikes!), I still drink too much soda: about 1-1.5 L of diet soda and about 1 L of water. I currently weigh 75 kg, but I think the extra mass comes from much more regular exercise.

I don't have any particular health issues, whatsoever, but after a few decades of daily soda abuse, I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

If you hate exercising you might try focusing on something else and use it as a way to get better.

Like I want to shoot in the 80s in golf, run a 7 minute mile or whatever. It helped me find a love for it because it was a way to “train for my goal” rather than an everyday slog.

After about 4 weeks I started to look forward to it and really went down a rabbit hole optimizing workouts, sleep and food.

It can be really fun!

Back in the dot-com days, thanks to employer-subsidized soda fridges, I was drinking easily 6+ cans of diet soda a day (in my case, Diet Dr. Pepper). Along with other startup related behaviors like eating fast food (Carl's Jr, what's up?) and not exercising, my weight increased to around 220 lbs on a 6'1" frame. I stopped drinking diet soda around the time I joined a weight-loss startup in 2011, and started eating healthier and I end up dropping down to around 175 lbs, which I more or less maintain to this day. I personally think "diet soda", even though "0 calories" doesn't do anything great for your metabolism or weight and is a great oxymoron of a product.

It sounds like you’re confusing the effects of eating unhealthy food with the effects of drinking soda

There's some clinical evidence that artificual sweeteners are associated with weight gain. It's interesting stuff and worth a look.

I think everyone knows that "diet" in a product name means it's healthier than the non-diet product.

It also does help with your health if you were going to consume the non-diet version of that product in similar quantities.

> I think everyone knows that "diet" in a product name means it's healthier than the non-diet product.

Disagree with this. Its marketing BS to focus on one diet optimization usually at the expense of something else.

What would be the something else? There are occasional studies that may indicate health risks associated with diet soda, but as best as I can tell they are not really conclusive. The health issues with consuming large amounts of refined sugar on the other hand are concrete and very well documented. Dental caries, increased likelihood of developing diabetes mellitus, etc.

It's true that refined sugar has been very clearly proven to be associated with terrible consequences to your health. But most of the sugar substitutes used in "diet" products simply don't have those warnings because they're just newer and less studied. But there's been a lot of recent research showing just how bad these artificial sweeteners can be even in small amounts. Some studies have even shown long-lasting and intergenerational effects on the gut microbiome[0] and increased cancer risks.[1] The impacts on the gut microbiome[2] are particularly worrying to me. Many of these sweeteners love to sit in your gut for a while and can lead to really weird microbiome makeups and possibly even be a risk factor for diabetes and/or metabolic syndromes

[0] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnut.2021.79584...

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25231862/

More reading:

- https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/artificial-sweeteners-su...

- https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...

what is wrong here? your citation looks ok and new... get down vote

The real solution is you should be drinking water or tea instead of Sode. Diet soda sounds equally healthy but keeps your palette wanting sweet.

Aspartame which is often used for 'diet' drinks is rather crappy chemical stuff you really shouldn't be putting in your body in the first place.

People feel they are doing something for their health when its really not the case since they still remain well within the junkfood category (something akin to using denser filter in cigarettes - less big particles may well mean finer stuff is kept in lungs for longer, and travels deeper)

IHMO you are confusing product marketing with good health advice.

Marketing is just a legal way to tell only the good side of a story.

"low-fat" usually means sugar. "sugar free" usually means artificial sweeteners (or something made without sugar anyway). Even "no added sugar" is suspect.

What I've found hilarious is the new "KETO!" marketing craze. I really suspect that most of these products will not induce or maintain ketosis.

(the actual health impact of ketosis is not clear to me anyway)

A ketogenic diet is ultra-low-carb, to the point where your body enters ketosis, and becomes much more amenable to burning your fat reserves for energy.

Essentially, keto-friendly means very low carb/sugar.

But if you go to costco, and browse the "keto" section, I have doubts that the products (mostly dessert/snack products) are really keto-friendly.

"keto crackers", "keto bombs", "keto clusters", "mini cookies", "keto cups", etc...

I suspect they must be sharply constrained in serving size

The trick is to do an 4:1 dilution of sparkling water and diet soda.

You will end up with 1-2 cans of diet soda heavily diluted by water.

After you get used to it, ordinary canned soda will start tasting like the carbonated syrup it actually is.

Oh no, the trick is to buy the sirup from a discount supermarket (for example Aldi's Diet Orange soda sirup) and dillute it with water from your sodastream (or sodastream knock-off, also from Aldi). This way you will always know that there are three components in your soda: sirup, tap water and CO2.

Ok so there's an even better trick, hear me out. Don't drink soda. It's sugar, water, and purple. Two of those are not good for you.

It's wild how far we go to keep doing our bad habits. It's like with veganism. That major EAT–Lancet study found that, although vegetarianism and veganism had many positive impacts on measures of environmental impacts, vegetarianism was actually more beneficial than veganism on impact of biodiversity. This is basically because vegans consume more "fake meat" and other such products that require a lot of processing and packaging and end up having a terrible impact on the environment

Curry is great! I do veganism occasionally for periods of time and I personally believe that if you can't do it without craving meat you are just not creative enough. There's plenty of amazing food and flavors out there that don't need meat. Not to mention, you'd probably have a smaller environmental impact by buying some really expensive meat/eggs from some free-range farmer from your local farmer's market than if you buy that fake meat stuff that's probably made of the soybeans grown on the soy farms that are rapidly replacing the Amazon

Sparkling water on its own is fine.

What would have happened if you continued to drink Diet Dr. Pepper while also joining the weight-loss startup, eating healthier and exercising?

Between personal experience and Having talked to a lot of weight loss people. Diet sodas seem to increase overall hunger. Making it harder to stick to a good diet.

People have one can lose weight on a Twinkie diet. Doesn’t mean it will work for the 99% of us.

The fact may be that artificial sweeteners may alter your microbiome and cause you to crave more calories as a result [1]

Not to mention the most carcinogenic ingredient? It's the dark caramel coloring, which is why you get in Denmark 'clear cola' from their local brands (North Americans can enjoy some Zevia in this way). I guess that's just burnt sugar off the bottom of a vat or something. [2] Not to mention the phosphoric acid in there for the 'taste', which is a pretty sweet ingredient for stripping rust off of chrome! [3]

I don't know why I still drink this stuff on occasion hahaha. They even take that acid out of stuff like hardware store rust strippers these days.

[1] https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/artificial-sweeteners-can-...

[2] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/289687

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7OdX42NjWQ

> around the time I joined a weight-loss startup in 2011, and started eating healthier

I'm not sure how you can distinguish between the effect of the change to the drinks and the effect of the other changes.

Personally, I've gone from drinking 6+ cans of Diet Coke a day to 1-2 plus water with no other changes and noticed no effect from it.

I found out that when I stop drinking Diet Coke, I get depression symptoms. (Reproduced three times now).

It must have something to do with the aspartame in it. When I take DLPA pills (a breakdown product of aspartame), the depression goes away quite fast. Drinking a can or two of Diet Coke also does the trick.

You sure it’s not just the caffeine? Caffeine withdrawal symptoms includes depression and a host of related symptoms.

I'd talk to your doctor about this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine_dependence

Try caffeine free and see if it persists. I drink caffeine free.

I’ll be going on a multi month purge from it though. Water only for a few months. It’ll be brutal especially because I have high standards for water. (And most water tastes terrible)

I’m not sure all the attention on caffeine vs caffeine free is deserved, I suspect that a ton of other chemicals are involved. It took me months to get over drinking diet sodas with a ton of withdrawal symptoms along the way, but it was worth it - addiction is terrible.

Biggest advantage over regular coke: does not get sticky when you spill it.

Stains from diet soda are also way easier to completely clean up due to the lack of sugar! I've seen Diet Coke/Coke Zero stains vanish from light-colored clothing within minutes.

Also, does not attract ants.

See: Diet Coke and Mentos.

So they just decided to ignore the Caffeine in it for the sake of making a point?

Yeah, this article makes no sense. Caffeine is absolutely a cognitive performance enhancer and is undisputably in Diet Coke.

It isn't mentioned, but maybe they used caffeine free diet coke?

> (Except for the caffeine of course, and maybe that it’s so delicious?)

It's the first line of the article.

"Placebo enthusiasts" is a great term.

I wasn't even aware this was a question.

I'd also consider the possibility that high-achievers realize that drinking calories is hardly ever worth it. And if you want something that tastes like soda but has all the nutritional value of water, Diet Coke is your best option.

Protein shakes are great!

Those have a massive amount of calories

They really do, but if you power a couple down in substitute for lunch and aren't tempted to snack, then it can be an OK thing to do.

They should be used as a supplement and not a substitute.

Eh. If you want to slightly lower your caloric intake, and you normally eat a 700 calorie lunch... replacing that with 350 calories of protein shake a few times per week and still eating a healthy dinner, etc, is reasonable.

Why? I've been drinking a 250cal protein shake for lunch almost every day for years. When will I die?

If you just want the protein you can buy unsweetened protein powder and mix it with water. If that's too bland you can add a little juice, still way less calories than the typical bottled protein drink.

Check out isopure protein drinks for a lower calorie alternative.

0 carbs, lactose free. http://www.theisopurecompany.com/en-au/product/isopurezeroca...

They aftertaste is a little weird, but still much easier to drink than protein shakes.

Honestly one of the worst things I've ever tasted - I haven't seen them around for years.

Plain protein powder (Optimum Nutrition / whatever you like) is generally mostly protein so if you're good with just chucking it in water you have a nearly equivalent macro breakdown.

YMMV. I LOVED the taste of those (used to get the green tea flavor). I have now switched to an "infusions" variety [0]. Has a better taste (I mix with water) than chocolate in water, and is very refreshing after you let it sit for about a min after shaking.

[0]:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FHPGS4V?pd_rd_i=B07FHPGS4V&pf_r...

They can, or they can't, depends on what's in them.

A scoop of protein powder in water or almond milk might hit 130 calories and will satiate, unlike diet coke.

For the amount of protein they contain this is just false

They really don't at all given their nutritional value. 25g of protein (which should suppress appetite a bit) for 120 calories is by no means massive.

I use them as a convenient way to guarantee protein and calories, and use them as a way to help hammer out my hunger after the gym. 2-ish scoops, whole milk, mmm. Drink it fast, because it is not meant to be savored.

600 calories, tops.

Yes, and they have a purpose. Drinking those calories is good.

They are but I like a constant stream of cool drink around. Usually this is just water or seltzer but sometimes it's a coke zero :-)

This is me so long as you consider me a high-achiever. I got addicted to coke when I was young and as an adult I drink lots of Coke Zero (previously Diet Coke) because I can't or don't want to break the habit and I want to preserve every spare calorie I can for desserts. Not gaining weight as I transitioned into an old man required me to severely cut back on my consumption and liquid calories have always been at the top of the list.

The absolute best pipeline is to go Coke -> Diet Coke -> Coke Zero -> Caffeine Free Coke Zero -> colored water -> water, but there is no pipeline at all. It was cancelled, and people should be aware of what they drink and drink mindfully and responsibly.

For me it was Various Kinds of Sugary Soda -> Club Soda or sparkling mineral water sometimes with a squeeze of citrus.

I craved the carbonation more than I craved the sugar, it turns out. Club soda instead of seltzer water because seltzer often has ~0 salt in it, which tastes pretty damn gross when combined with carbonation (to me, anyway)

I find artificial sweeteners intolerable, so skipped that phase, I guess.

I dislike comments like this because it is stated as a fact. There is no pipeline at all.

I'll update it for you!

Sprite Zero has zero caffeine, if you must have a sugar and caffeine-free Coke product.

Sprite doesn't include any caffeine [0] in the regular version, but there's a massive amount of sugar as per usual with soda.

[0]: https://www.sprite.com/products/sprite

Indeed, which is why I specified Sprite Zero, which doesn't seem to be too hard to find in stores when I bother to look.

Yeah, Sprite Zero is the sugar-free diet version.

One thing is certain: after years of Coke Zero, I've come to dislike regular sugary Coke. It's undrinkable, makes me even thirstier, and the American version with HFCS might be even worse. Also, Coke Zero >> Diet Coke, it's the perfect version of the Coca-Cola formula in my opinion.

The other day I had a sip of some no sugar soda, and I had to double check if I had by mistake bought the full sugar one, it tasted so sweet. Nope, it was sugar free. They're real good these days, though I don't know how healthy.

I find Coke Zero disgusting. But I feel the same way about regular Coke, and Coke Zero is supposed mimic the way it tastes. So that makes sense.

-- can't drink coke zero or regular coke, regular coke is so disgusting - coke zero is meh - however - easy to knock off 3 or 4 diets cokes in a work day - tastes so good --

I agree. I'd think it would inhibit the cognition. Just by the fact that it is ultraprocessed "food". And we don't see smart people drink sodas.

It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the cola of coca that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire pits, the pits become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

Trivia: Diet Pepsi has 177mg Aspartame, so a rounding error's difference of phenylalanine.

Perhaps this started as a Diet Coke marketing viral campaign?

The original impetus seems to be from this tweet:

https://mobile.twitter.com/AaronBergman18/status/15273336157...

> 12oz Diet Coke contains 100mg phenylalanine, which is an indirect precursor to dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain.

If "leads to dopamine eventually via some pathway" were sufficient for dopamine, hoo boy, the field of psychopharmacology would look radically different. Would certainly make treating ADHD and Parkinson's way easier (and schizophrenia and mania way harder).

Or, y'know, it's the caffeine. Especially since it doesn't cause the sugar spike/crash like regular soft drinks.

It took me many years but a great thing you can do for yourself is quit all soda.

Even these "cognitive enhancer" sodas?

> More concretely, phenylalanine is in all sorts of foods like eggs, chicken, milk, soybeans, and breast milk. Remember how phenylalanine is an essential amino acid? And remember how you’re reading this right now and not dead? From these facts, we may conclude that you consume phenylalanine all the time.

Oh man, this had me chuckling and is a great TLDR for many supplements.

i so confused. is phenylalanine good or bad?

Causing one to be not dead weighs heavily in its favour by my reckoning

> essential amino acid

Essential means you both need it to live and your body can't make it on its own - you must get it from diet.

It generally isn't. Some people don't have the ability to metabolize phenylalanine, and it will slowly poison them. However, if this is you, you would definitely know.

So if your PA level is constantly high because of drinking Diet Coke, then you will poison yourself too?

No.

> PA level is constantly high because of drinking Diet Coke

I'd probably question if this is even possible in a healthy individual. You probably eat a lot of phenylalanine regularly. My intuition is that you'd really have to go out of your way and actively want to give yourself brain damage to even achieve this.

Given this: https://www.myfooddata.com/articles/high-phenylalanine-foods... which shows chicken breast has 2190mg and your average can of diet coke has around 104 mg https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1617863/, I think that probably holds.

EDIT: That link probably underscores that the warning label on your coke can is purely for the benefit of Phenylketoneurics, not you. A steak & 2 egg breakfast with a latte would land you with far more phenylalanine than you could sanely consume purely through coke. You'd likely be sick from the caffeine sooner than the phenylalanine.

If you have phenylketonuria, then you can't metabolize it very fast and so anything in excess of what your body needs becomes a liability.

Well that blows my summer plans!

Then how the hell did Trump do it, dammit??? ;-)

Calories in vs calories out is a myth. How do diet sodas affect insulin response? Not well I suspect.

“Calories in vs calories out” is a restatement of the second law of thermodynamics and must be true.

Unfortunately calories out is excessively variable, as are hunger and energy, which affect calories in.

Perhaps from a purely academic sense but in practice it's pretty reliable.

'Calories in vs calories out' is more meme than myth. It's both true and nearly worthless to aid anyone in weight loss because it's not the thing anyone is confounded by.

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