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Comment by theshrike79 | Hacker News Reader

Sugar free additives (at least aspartame and asesulfame K, jury is out on sucralose, stevia and the others) make my intestines ... not work according to empirical studies.

I drank exclusively sugar free drinks for a good 15 years and started to notice that my farts started smelling _really_ bad. Like "_I_ need to leave the room" bad. Thought it was gluten or wheat, it wasn't. Changed to sugary drinks for a few weeks -> boom, bowel/intestine issues gone.

Had a second bout of "issues" when Pepsi sneakily changed from pure sugar to sugar/artificial in their non-max lineup. Took me a while to actually read the label and see WTF happened. Now I'm a Coke drinker, not because I like it, but because it's the only one that's sweetened only with sugar.

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> Had a second bout of "issues" when Pepsi sneakily changed from pure sugar to sugar/artificial in their non-max lineup. Took me a while to actually read the label and see WTF happened.

I'm looking at Pepsi's website right now and the ingredients in Pepsi are given as "carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, sugar, phosphoric acid, caffeine, citric acid, natural flavor".

I guess it's theoretically possible that they're including artificial sweeteners under "natural flavor", but somehow I doubt it.

These things can vary by geography due to regulations, sugar tax, etc.

This is an extremely strange thing to vary, though, because the point of drinking Pepsi is that you aren't drinking Diet Pepsi.

Tell that to the EU regulators and sugar taxes.

Not everyone lives in the US.

This is the one made here: "Vesi, sokeri, hiilidioksidi, väri (E150d), happamuudensäätöaine(E338), aromit (mm. kofeiini), makeutusaineet (E950, E955)"

It clearly states that in addition to sugar (sokeri) it has two sweeteners, E950 (Asesulfame K) and E955 (Sucralose).

I think the German version is sugar-only, at least the flavoured kinds.

Code uses corn syrup not sugar.

Another disgusting chemist’s creation that you should definitely avoid if you want to lead a healthy lifestyle.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/why-high-fructose-corn-...

US Coke uses corn syrup.

It's not a thing in Europe.

Everything in that article applies almost equally to regular sugar. The article even mentions it in a few places.

I have to rant: Every anti-HFCS person I've met always gives arguments without considering whether they apply to sugar as well. Always.

The reason I don't switch is because a 0.5L coke has around 210 calories. You're only supposed to consume around ~2000 calories per day, so even with 4 cokes in a day that's almost half of calorie intake. So not an option for me.

A 0.355L pepsi has 150 calories. That is exactly the same calories per liter as the figure you cite for coke.

drinking 4 cokes a day is an actual problem in itself btw

Drinking 0.5L bottles 4 times a day?

The problem doesn't seem to be just sugar.

I've found that the smaller 250ml cans is enough to satisfy any cravings.[1] Occasionally I take 2. Even with 2 that's 25% of what you are saying.

[1] http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2021/Dec/taming-my-soda-addictio...

to counter your anecdote with another one, my grandpa drank 10 diet cokes/diet dr. peppers a day for maybe the last 15 years of his life and suffered no illness until a sudden heart attack in his late 70s

Not everyone's gut flora is the same. People are _very_ different.

I'm pretty sure your grandpa could also eat endless amounts of wheat products. If my grandpa tried that, he'd literally shit out his intestines because of the gluten (celiac's disease).

correct, the man ate baffling amounts of cookies daily

Did you gain any weight due to the switch?

Or even lose weight?

Not really, I can't drink that much of sugary colas. I start feeling icky from the sweetness after 0,5l or so.

The artificial ones I could literally drink like water, there are no satiation signals going to my brain so I could easily down 3 litres of Pepsi MAX a day.

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