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Comment by dougdonohoe | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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.

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.

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?

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