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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that the WHO has maintained its recommended max. daily intake, which is the equivalent of about 10 cans of soft drinks a day... make of that what you will.

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I've worked with folks who sit at their desk and drink diet soda from those giant reusable 64oz cups, all day. When it's all zero calories, I guess I can see how you get there.

That is insane, are they peeing every hour? I feel like at that point it must affect work output.

The stuff is caffeinated, it probably helps.

time lost maybe nullified by increased focus and lack of fatigue due to the caffeine?

Ask someone who has worked in a restaurant about the habits of diet coke drinkers. They always require 10x or more refills than water or soda.

Perhaps that's partially due to a feeling of moral licensing?

e.g. This thing has no calories, therefore I feel justified in overindulging and drinking tons of it to let my primal urge for sweetness go unopposed.

I can speak to this, anecdotally, as I read this comment, at a restaurant, on my 3rd Coke Zero refill.

I realized a long time ago that I really enjoy drinking soda, and not much else. Very little interest in alcohol, sure I have some with friends but never when alone. Don't drink coffee (I have, of course, but never particularly enjoyed it or drank it regularly). I do enjoy Gatorade and fruit juice, of course it's because they are sweet.

Anyway, I also realized that if I'm going to drink soda regularly, I had to switch to diet. Just for the calories, really, at the time concerns about sugar weren't as prominent. But I gained a bit of weight in my late teens and switching to Diet Coke was a "free" reduction of 500 calories per day. "Free" as in, easy to switch, no dieting, no eating less, etc.

My point here is that I think the refill situation is the opposite of what you suggest -- diet soda doesn't cause me to drink more, it's the fact that I've always drank a lot of soda that caused me to choose diet soda.

Oh, and maybe it's related, I love chewing on ice that has been doused in soda. A server sees an "empty" glass and wants to clear it, but I see a mountain of delicious ice. Weird, I know.

7-11 at one point had a 128oz fountain drink which is more than 10 cans of soda (i.e. 120 fl oz).

Yep that's true. In the summer of '04 I worked as a Napa delivery driver, driving parts orders all over the city to mechanic shops as needed. 7-11 had a location right across the street from us, so it was common that we would make a "sev" run in the morning to get everybody caffeinated. The manager there was a badass classic parts guy that was a great guy and who did his job really well, but drank copious amounts of caffeine.

7-11 started selling an enormous 128 oz mug that we would fill with soda in the morning and drink throughout the day. That was an insane amount of soda. But my boss at the time would have me take his 128 oz mug and fill it with several pots of coffee. The clerk at sev would joke about how she had to make a couple of extra pots around 8 am because of my boss, and how "I know it's still for him even if he's too chicken to come in himself."

To this day I've never known anybody that drank as much caffeine as he did. I'm guessing the nicotine from the chain smoking helped take some of the edge off :-D

Those were different times.

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