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Comment by steve8918 | Hacker News Reader

I have deep grooves in my teeth right above my gums on both sides of my mouth from drinking 3-6 cokes a day for 10+ years. For some reason, I have a habit of swishing the drinks on the bottom of my mouth and I think this is the reason why my teeth are so jacked up. In the past year, I've largely stopped drinking Coke, partly because of this, and because of the other health problems associated with drinking so much soft drinks. I've switched to water and have a sugary drink maybe once or twice a week.

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Besides being bad for your teeth it's a nightmare on your body. That insulin dump from the onslaught of sugar will make you much more likely to develop diabetes, and some studies have shown a long-term metabolic effect where your body prefers sugars for energy instead of fats. That and the empty calories will lop-side your diet and make it harder to lose weight or gain muscle.

There are lots of ways you can drink something tasty and not have such a huge impact on your body. Sometimes i'll buy a two-liter of green tea ginger ale or cranberry juice, and make a 50/50 or 25/75 mix of the drink and tap water.

You can also just cold-brew tea or coffee and mix in a little sweetener or other flavor to change it up. It's cheaper than soda and (after you stop drinking soda every day) tastes much better because you're not getting hit over the head with truckloads of sugars. Ask a European about how sweet all our foods and drinks are.

I 100% agree. Actually I have done almost exactly that, switched to tea, or ice tea. I'm not completely off the sugary drinks, but I'll drink things like Honest Tea with a lot less sugar than Coke, or just plain Tea.

The thing I'm actually most worried about is pancreatic cancer. I'm not even sure if there's a link between that and soft drinks, but I read one study where having 2-3 soft drinks a week doubled your risk of getting it. Well I was having 20 a week, which scared the crap out of me. And more and more people appear to be contracting and dying of it, so it's my secret fear.

For sweetness, try rotating between non-fructuse sweeteners. like saccharin, aspartame, stevia, etc. I also find that Coke Zero is a nice way to cut down on sugar but still keep the Coke taste, and it's a lot less acidic than Diet Coke. However I don't find vending machines stocking it as often as I'd like. That's assuming you are not buying into the aspartame myths. I've got diabetes in my family, so to me the risks of sugar far outweighs the less than slight risk of aspartame.

In terms of acidity it's the other way around. From the article:

"say you have two liquids, like Diet Coke and Coke Zero. Diet Coke has a pH of 4. Coke Zero has a pH of 3. Since pH measurements are logarithmic, this means that Coke Zero is ten times more acidic than Diet Coke."

Did you read the article? Coke zero is ten times more acidic than diet coke.

Actually I can't eat aspartame because it severely upsets my stomach, so I need to avoid it completely. Even things like chewing gum with aspartame cause my stomach to get really upset. I think the best solution is simply not eat as much sugar as possible. I was on South Beach diet several years ago, and I actually lost 20 lbs in 5 months, so maybe I will do something similar.

Or, you know, stop drinking sweet things =) I know that's heretical in our society, but once you cut out sweet things your palate will change and you'll find things like unsweetened teas (cold Oolong is fucking amazing) and juice/water mixes are cheap, simple, tasty and healthy.

I love unsweetened iced tea and drink it as often as I can get it when I'm visiting home in the States, but it's so hard to get good iced tea in Europe, and since it's hard to keep enough ice on hand, it's a pain to try and make it here as well. So I end up drinking stuff like Pepsi Max (Can't get Diet Pepsi in Norway) or other diet sodas.

Screw the cancer. Stop drinking soda because it's just not tasty.

There's a whole world of drinks not found in your local vending machine that are crazy tasty and healthy for you. Fruit/vegetable-infused water, iced teas and blends, juice seltzer, kombucha, iced coffee, and about a billion delicious latin juice drinks with fruit that only people who speak spanish know about (my fav's probably Guanabana, though watered down a bit).

Unsweetened tea and coffee are definitely your best bets next to plain tap water for generally healthy drinks. Though I have found that drinking loads of black tea stains your teeth (it was cleanable), and switched to green tea.

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-drinks/

Nightmare, onslaught, much more likely, lop-side, huge impact, truckloads of sugar... How can you use such scary descriptions without any giving any evidence backing up what you're saying?

This is my favorite article describing the effects of a Coke on the body: https://www.nutritionresearchcenter.org/healthnews/what-happ...

This article has some good explanation of the health detriments too: http://health.yahoo.net/experts/drmao/what-soft-drinks-are-d...

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