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Comment by dfxm12 | Hacker News Reader

Tangentially related, but I take a look at the amount of sugar in a regular cola (39g of added sugar in a 12oz can of Coke!!), and I wonder how much damage that has done to my body (and taste buds) over the years (let alone society as a whole). I always wondered what a Coke with just half the sugar would taste like. I think I would enjoy it. Well, recently, my grocery store has been stocking De la Calle Tepache. It's not cola, but still, it's a carbonated soft drink with just 8g of sugar in a 12 oz can. It's got less than a quarter of the sugar of Coke and it's still plenty sweet!

How many people could have avoided diabetes or other health problems if coca-cola just set the standard that 8g of sugar is enough?

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Looking at the ingredients of "De la Calle Tepache" it contains ERYTHRITOL, which is a sugar alcohol/artificial sweetener but does not count as "sugar" on the nutrition facts label. This is why it tastes "plenty sweet".

So similar to Coke Zero/Diet Coke.

And Erythritol is linked to heart attacks and strokes via enhanced platelet activity.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02223-9

Did they control for the fact that most non-nutritive sweeteners get consumed in a diet of highly processed foods, which are more likely to be causative of CVD than just the sweetener?

It's not correct to say that it's an artificial sweetener -- not all non-caloric sweeteners are artificial, and not all processed additives are synthetic. That is to say, erythritol occurs in the environment in all kinds of settings, where e.g. sucralose is artificial because it needs to be synthesized by humans in a laboratory.

To be clear, that is the only sense in which I distinguish artificial/synthetic and natural substances -- those words are heavily loaded now and carry with them all kinds of connotations to the point of not even being particularly useful, but if we're going to use them we should at least be correct!

Does the erythritol in food products come direct from nature? Not according to wikipedia

> Erythritol is manufactured using enzymatic hydrolysis of the starch from corn to generate glucose.[25] Glucose is then fermented with yeast or another fungus to produce erythritol. A genetically engineered mutant form of Yarrowia lipolytica, a yeast, has been optimized for erythritol production by fermentation, using glycerol as a carbon source and high osmotic pressure to increase yields up to 62%.

So I feel like your specific wording is just as misleading as calling it "artificial".

Cane sugar is processed an unreal amount too.

If Erythritol is artificial based on that processing, then sugar from sugar cane sure is too

>It's not correct to say that it's an artificial sweetener

And what does that matter for the context of this conversation? Honestly?

The conversation isn't about whether or not it's synthetic sweetener. It's about the total amount of added sweeteners in the product. Therefore, any sweetener, synthetic or natural, count toward this end, correct?

I drank a couple Cokes a day for many, many years. I finally decided to quit. It took a full year before losing desire for Coke. I tried a few sips of it, and it actually tasted bad.

Switched to diet Coke, and drank that for a few more years. Then decided that was probably just as bad, and now drink sparkling water.

I no longer have any desire to drink sweetened beverages of any sort.

Being older, I decided to stop eating all ice cream, cookies, candy bars, pie, etc., about 2 months ago. This is difficult. I've tried that before, and failed.

I quit consuming protein powder, too. I can't find a brand that is just protein powder, without any sweetener of any sort, even at health nut stores. I switched to eating boiled eggs instead.

Unflavoured whey protein isolate isn't hugely popular but you can get it online.

US: https://nutricost.com/collections/protein/products/nutricost...

AU: https://www.bulknutrients.com.au/products/whey-protein-isola...

edit - I should add, you can get a bit of an idea of the quality of the protein powder by just looking at the percentage of protein in it. Nutricost is 85% and Bulk Nutrients is 87%. Doesn't leave much room to shove other ingredients in with protein levels that high.

You can also go buy 20kg bags of WPI from NZ (which is where I think most of these retail products get their WPI from) https://www.nzmp.com/global/en/products/ingredients/types/pr...

What’s the price on those bags? I’m not contacting them and hidden pricing is scummy.

I think you have to bid on their auctions. It is more of a wholesale thing for people buying tons of it. https://pure-product.com/products/whey-protein-isolate-20kg-... they are reselling one for $709 USD

OWN Brand protein drinks are what I drink.

I too ran into that issue as I nearly cut all sugar from my life since 6 months. As the other pointed out, here is my alternative, which is great [0]! I once drank it raw, it was terrible. But usually I blend it with the European version of Soylent powder and then it tastes amazing. 1. https://www.natureletics.de/products/natureletics-pure-natur...

I think it helps to look for protein powder meant to be incorporated into other things (as opposed to ones you mix with milk and drink directly).

[1] Quest brand: https://www.questnutrition.com/collections/protein-powders/p...

[2] essentially powdered egg whites are easy to find, for example: https://www.amazon.com/Its-Just-Protein-Non-GMO-Unflavored/d...

One that's easy to find in stores is "collagen peptides", I add them to oatmeal, pretty good. And to echo a sibling comment, unflavored whey protein is harder to find, but it's out there, one of my grocers stocks it.

That's surprising, my local upscale supermarket even has like multiple brands of plain whey protein. I'd probably just order it online then. I like to mix it sometimes with cocoa powder, then just more or less chug it lol

Read the ingredients closely. Sometimes, the sweetener has a chemical name you won't recognize.

Difficulty finding it could just be where you live? Every supplement shop within 50 miles of me (of which there are only 4) has an unflavored, unsweetened protein. And, if I type "unflavored unsweetened whey protein isolate" into amazon, there's 30 bags for me to choose from. I randomly clicked on 5 of the first page results, and none of them had a sweetener on their nutrition facts/ingredient list.

Talk about timing--I was literally downing a glass of this as I was reading your comment:

https://canadianprotein.com/products/bulk-grass-fed-new-zeal...

They ship to the US for free, too.

You can't find a brand because people don't buy it because it tastes awful.

For unflavored protein powder I like the Naked brand: https://nakednutrition.com

I drink Orgain which I buy from Costco (the regular 20g one, not a fan of their “plant based one” or 30g one.) It uses monk fruit as a sweetener instead of sugar.

NOW has unflavored protein produced in a GMP-certified facility. You can also buy protein powder directly from dairy farms, which is helpful when there's a shortage/price-spike - I've bought from Dana farms. It's also significantly more fresh and tasteless. Buying from Dana Farms you can either buy it with a small amount of emulsifier to help it dissolve in water or just single-ingredient pure without that.

If purity is particularly important to you I'd recommend "isolate" over "concentrate", it will have even lower amounts of lactose, which can benefit people who are severely lactose-intolerant.

You could use Kefir to make your own whey protein. You use milk but the Kefir actually eats the sugar in the milk and the whey ends up separated from the fat.

Pretty good stuff :)

Yeah, I ran into a similar issue. I mostly use Isopure now. They have an unflavored variant. I usually blend it with frozen berries and fresh veggies.

I have a similar story, used to drink a litre of coke every couple of days when I was 15. At some point I decided I didn't want that life any more and quit. It's been several years now and I still can't stand the taste of coke. It just tastes so artificial with an awful after taste; and I've never really had a sweet tooth anyway.

Just regular ol' water is eternal

> Then decided that was probably just as bad, and now drink sparkling water.

Heh that's usually what gets everybody who visits Germany for the first time: what's with Germans and that sparkling water? I never realized it isn't really a thing in most parts of the world.

And it seems pretty divisive to folks visiting from outside Europe. Some think it's disgusting, some get used to it after a while and like it.

I drink both, plain water and sparkling water. Sometimes I feel the urge to have something more than just water, especially in the summer returning home and being really thirsty, and usually sparkling water is enough to fool my senses. So depending on where you are, maybe you wanna try it for some time if you're trying to get off coke or other soda.

To satisfy my need for chocolate, I buy cacau nibs (raw chocolate).

Once I realized I only liked soft drinks because of the carbonation, it was easy to switch to seltzer water. Now not only can I not stand most sugary drinks, I've almost entirely lost my sweet-tooth for everything. I basically only drink water, coffee, and whiskey in various proportions but mostly water. A little cream in the coffee.

I'm still ok with honey, and every once in a while I have a hankering for a single scoop of ice cream or custard.

A few times a year I get a migraine or super bad headache. A can of coke, when you don't ever drink it otherwise, is super effective against headaches.

Sparkling water is also bad, albeit significantly less so.

The carbonation makes it acidic which is one of the two elements that makes carbonated soft drinks the best way to rot out all of your teeth as quickly as possible (the other element is the copious amounts of refined, simple sugar).

Nothing beats plain old water, except maybe tea.

Whoa, in the UK they changed Coca Cola to contain "only" 11.4g carbohydrates. I think that was a response to the Soft Drinks Industry Levy of 2018. To me it tastes the same but without the stickiness that made me want to brush my teeth immediately afterwards.

11.4 g per 100 g, yes. OPs example is also 11%.

That means around 33g per can so almost nothing has changed.

Yeah and in Europe the can is not 12oz (35.5cl) but 33cl

> made me want to brush my teeth immediately afterwards.

Note: do not brush your teeth immediately after drinking soda. The sugar (or rather the byproducts of the digestion of sugar by bacteria in your mouth) and the phosphoric acid in the soda will temporarily soften your enamel, which will then be partially removed by brushing.

It's best to wait a while. But then, when you do brush, go ahead and floss too!

But a rinse with water would be wise and harmless right?

Correct.

> or rather the byproducts of the digestion of sugar by bacteria in your mouth)

...for now. There may be a "vaccine" for dental caries if this recently HN'd article is to be believed and isn't sponsored content:

https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/the-rise-and-impending-fall-of-th...

Though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caries_vaccine suggests it may not be that simple.

Are you sure that the difference isn't from sugar in the UK Coca Cola vs. high fructose corn syrup in US Coca Cola? The prevalence of HFCS in the US is partially (largely?) due to corn subsidies on top of the cheapness of producing HFCS [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup#Unite...

I know a lot of UK soft drinks changed their recipes in 2018 - I guess I was more surprised that Coca Cola isn't the same thing the world over.

Pure water plus HFCS vs table sugar is generally indistinguishable in well conducted blind taste tests.

People can often notice the difference in products because of other factors like the water used to bottle them etc.

I realize your point may be valid because I don't know all the details... but I don't know anyone who prefers HFCS coke to Mexican/European sugar coke

The water between those 2 are totally disconnected and yet both tastes fantastic compared to American fructose coke

It matters so much to me that I have a Costco membership just to buy the stuff

It’s a little more complicated as the cokes sold in Mexico stopped using cane sugar.

However, Coca-Cola the company realized they had an easy excuse to sell a “premium” product at inflated prices so yes it very much does taste different, just as intended. https://news.yahoo.com/mexican-coke-us-still-cane-sugar-1520...

Personally I very easily notice a difference between cans, plastic bottles, and glass ones. But that never seems to be a concern for most people.

I got rid of my car about a year ago and I got fed up of carrying bottles of the shit back from Tesco so just switched to water. I wasn't even drinking the sugar stuff. Made me think about the whole drinks industry a little.

They were a tyranny in our house too! I bought a Sodastream, HobbyBrew CO₂ cannister and an adapter to join the two together. For the cost of like 30 bottles of Diet Coke I now have cheap fizzy water and the kids can add squash to it.

I looked at doing this but calculated that the CO2 bottles work out more expensive than just buying bottled sparkling water from Lidl.

Yeah the CO2 bottles and exchange is expensive as hell. It's apparently cost effective if you use a commercial one but the outlay is pretty high. Not worth it either way IMHO. I just put up with flat shit.

There's also Sparkel, which uses a baking soda + citric acid powder in a separate reaction chamber. The cost is pretty low per bottle if you buy the bulk powders and mix it yourself; has been a while but when I had a Sparkel, I think I worked out that the cost was somewhere under 10 cents per 750ml bottle.

I was surprised to note that this is actually on par with most juices - 10% difference give or take.

Juice is not really healthy, it may not be a dangerous part of a particularly active lifestyle but for most lifestyles it probably is dangerous, especially considering that it is probably replacing whole fruit.

Exactly. The fiber content of whole fruit is one of the major benefits! You can't just replace fruit, even with "real" juice.

Coca-Cola did not change their standard "Coca-Cola Original Taste" drink to contain any less sugar in the UK.

Some other drinks (including Pepsi) have been reformulated with less sugar in the UK, but Coca Cola isn't one of them.

Not just UK. Regular Pepsi has tasted gross (because of sweeteners) in other parts of Europe too for the last few years.

I wonder how much sugar craving depends on age. As a child I would happily eat spoonfuls of plain sugar. Children seem much happier eating candy, etc. than adults. I wonder if sugar provides some additional value to children.

So when adults say, 'I discovered I didn't need as much sugar', maybe they, like the children, are just following their biological urges.

I did a very quick look for research on the question but didn't find anything.

I think this is part of it. Iirc “studies show” appreciation of bitterness (coffee, dark chocolate, broccoli) correlated with age. Iirc it was biologically related, but don’t quote me on that.

I've seen speculation that this is evolutionarily driven.

Kids do not have the wisdom to know which bitter foods are ok and which could harm you, so they avoid them all or die. By adulthood the selection pressure is much smaller because you will have learned what is safe to eat.

Part of it too is not just age but also careful engineering to breed out bitter compounds. Case example: brusselsprouts

"About 30 years ago, a Dutch scientist identified the chemicals that made brussels sprouts bitter. He selected seed varieties with lower levels of the bitter chemicals and bred new high-yielding varieties that tasted less bitter."

source: https://www.iowafarmbureau.com/Article/Its-not-your-imaginat...

some of it is to do with age too though. :P

Your taste buds adjust over time after you cut back. I used to drink a TON of soda and on the rare occasions I have one it's usually too sweet and I can't finish. There is sparkling water cola (no sugar, no sweetner) available in my area and it honestly tastes pretty close to what I remember cola tasting like at my peak soda days.

I would be curious to this as well if they truly made it less sweet. In the past they tried this with Coke C2 but instead swapped it with artificial sweeteners (yuck). Nowadays I only drink sparkling water and avoid added sugars like the plague. Now I find Coke way too sweet now to the point that it's enjoyable. I can't believe that when I was younger I would drink multiple cans per day.

As a sidebar, I really like British style baked beans. Trying to buy something locally made in the US with the same amount of sugar is impossible. For example, Heinz Vegetarian beans contains 31.5g! of added sugar per can. Even if you go to Whole Foods, the Amy's brand contains the same amount of sugar. The UK version only contains 12g, so I end up buying the imported beans.

> Trying to buy something locally made in the US with the same amount of sugar is impossible.

I avoid processed foods whenever practical, added sugar among the reasons. Sugar (and too much of it) is added to a ridiculous % of products, for no good reason.

In your example: try dried (white) beans. Soak overnight, cook ~1 hour until the beans are soft, steep or add eg. potato starch to bind leftover liquid, and then: add tomato paste & salt to taste. Just concentrated tomato, not ketchup / pasta sauce! Personally I add some chili paste as well, various herbs / spices could also go in but are really not needed.

Tastes waaay better than the canned stuff from supermarket. Practically 0 sugar in it, and not as much water as in the canned stuff.

12g! You can also buy reduced sugar and salt beans which taste fine once you readjust.

> 8g of sugar is enough

8g of sugar is enough for the taste but not enough for the crack effect to take place. Coca Cola et all did plenty of research into how to get their product to sell ever higher quantities (addictive properties).

There is another alternative that is getting more popular in the US, which are Olipop sodas. They are sweetened with stevia and have only 2-5g of sugar, plus a lot of added fiber.

As someone who very rarely drinks soda of any kind, I find typical Coke or Pepsi products overwhelmingly sweet and feel sick if I actually drink a whole can. I can stomach Olipop though. (No paid endorsement here, I discovered these through my partner. She is a health-obsessed person with a sweet tooth.)

The funny thing about Coke is that they have literally invented a version that tastes exactly the same, except it has zero calories and zero sugar. It's called Coke Zero.

We have two versions of Coke, both taste exactly the same except one kills you and one doesn't, and people will still voluntarily choose the one that kills you instead.

It doesn't taste exactly the same though.

I think it does. But even so, 80% of the taste with 0% of the calories seems like a bargain. Getting some marginal pleasure for 140 extra calories seems like a bad trade-off unless you're not trying to lose weight.

For me Zero tastes quite different and quite unpleasant. I had the same senstation of unpleasant flavour with Diet as well. If the only option was Zero/Diet/etc I probaly would just give up Coke altogethrer.

I agree. In my experience all the Coke Diet/Zero/etc varieties has this really distinctive taste and the aftertaste is also quite different from Classic. My husband is a fan of Zero and also claims it tastes the same. He has occassionally poured Zero into a glass for me thinking I couldn't tell the difference. Every single time I take one sip and that's all I need to identify it. YMMV.

That bad artificial sweetener aftertaste is way less pronounced if you are making a Rum and Coke though, so I always use Coke Zero for my adult beverages. Can't let the sugar kill me when I'm having several cups of vodka!

Diet Coke absolutely tastes different, but Coke and Coke Zero taste exactly the same - I doubt you would get a reliable result if you did a blind test.

I find this varies from person to person. I have nothing to back this up, but I have a hunch it is a genetic thing, like how cilantro tastes like soap to some but not to others.

I can identify the taste of Coke Zero (or anything with artificial sweeteners) vs coke 100% of the time. They barely even taste similar to me. My wife can’t taste a difference at all.

I can assure you that one sip is enough for me to reliably identify it. Both Diet and Zero leave a very distinct and unpleasant aftertaste that's just absent on the regular one.

(doesn't apply to Pepsi though - here the regular one also tastes bad now as it contains sweeteners as well, so I doubt I'd tell it apart from Pepsi Max unless trained beforehand - they're both gross, so I unfortunately had to switch to Coca-Cola for my occasional coke cravings)

No, it doesn't taste the same. It's different from Diet Coke because Diet Coke has it's own unique formulation but Coke Zero 100% has that artificial sweetener taste.

Which is which? Aspartame is the devil.

You're thinking of Diet Coke. Aspartame absolutely does have a taste, but it has also been studied an absolutely insane amount over literal decades and nobody can ever actually pin down a negative health effect from it.

Aspartame and/or Asesulfame K make my farts smell like literal death.

You know the kind that's not even funny, the kind that makes you yourself gag from just a little whiff.

This says Coke Zero has aspartame: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/about-us/faq/what-is-aspart...

Coke Zero has aspartame has main sweetener. It also has acesulfame potassium.

Sugar is one of the main contributors to suffering and death in the US. Evidence that aspartame is harmful at all is comparatively weak.

Better the devil you know. Everyone knows that sugar is bad for you. But aspartame is sold as being good for you because it’s zero calories. Must be good, right? It’s Diet Coke! A diabetic friend said his doctor told him regular coke was better for him. It causes migraines (source: me). I have heard many doctors say it is worse than real sugar. Yes, we don’t understand it yet. But we are pretty sure it’s bad, that’s why it’s the devil.

I have mixed regular Coke with club soda at home, and restaurants are often willing to do this for you too if you ask.

If you manage to take a break from Coke for a while then when you come back to it it's really undrinkable. I personally stopped drinking this or any similar hi sugar soft drinks a while ago and really makes me nauseous if I try.

Coca Cola actually made a reduced calorie with half the sugar content. It was called Coca Cola Life. It tasted less sweet obviously but not something I would notice if I didn't pour the drink myself.

I've switched to the Ollipop brand from regular soda. The taste is great and it doesn't make me feel like garbage. I'm never looking back.

I despise these companies for pumping sugar into everything... however, understand that street drinks in those countries are plenty sweet themselves and can be less hygienic as well --street food is also very fatty or oily. So, both local and foreign chains or brands exploit sugar and fats but so do the mom and pop or in many cases, kid street vendors. The stuff sells and costs less.

In mexico they sell horchate in plastic baggies with straws --boy, are they sweet.

Why despise them? If you mom put more sugar in one of her recipes because she thought it made it more tasty, and she got compliments on it when she served it, would you despise her?

It doesn't take malice to add sugar. It only takes people choosing to buy

Yeah, that's why my drink list contains mostly water, coffee, and tea. Trying to cut the energy drink habit, which is incredibly hard (they have 0g sugar, although for sure have artificial sugars). I'm down to about 1 per day, sometimes none at all.

When I finally manage to cut them out, I will be incredibly proud. But, man, they've made them so, so addicting.

Also... I don't know. I drink bottled water, which has microplastics, eh? There's no winning.

Is your local tap water no good? I carry around a 40oz Hydro Flask full of the city water from the tap and it works well for me.

No, it's disgusting. It leaves a yellow lining in the toilet and has a strong chlorine smell sometimes.

I do have a filter as well, which I use to cook with and drink when out of bottled water.

Its really not that much sugar if you’ve ever made lemonade for example

The amazing thing is that 8g is still a lot.

As well, the impacts of fructose and HFC.

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