Confessions of a diet coke
That was a decade ago and I still guzzle four or more cans of the stuff every day. That first drink can brighten my mood any time of any day. It is not that I particularly like the taste. Earnest-sounding teenagers log on to chatrooms to describe walking three kilometres in a blizzard to get a can or being diagnosed with a stomach ulcer after drinking six litres of diet cola a day. Lauren Quaintance drinks four cans of the black, bubbly stuff every day. Third place goes to bottled, because the carbonation never stores that well, and it makes the Diet Coke taste syrupy. Once, a science reporter on a newspaper where I worked showed me a medical journal that said some diet drinks caused holes in the brains of lab rats. A few years ago an email doing the rounds claimed that aspartame - the sweetener used in many diet drinks - was responsible for a host of horrors including epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and brain tumours. And I needed to stay alert during late-night shifts. Aspartame, found in NutraSweet and Equal brands, is made up of two amino acids: aspartic acid and phenylalanine. (I only buy cans. I swear their Diet Coke comes straight from heaven. According to the folks at Coca-Cola this is all an unfortunate misunderstanding. I was 21. For whatever reason, Diet Coke is the favourite target of conspiracy theorists, and Coca-Cola seems hurt by the suggestion it is peddling cancer in a can. It almost tastes neutral, like water or milk. com claim the sweetener causes multiple sclerosis, lupus, diabetes, chronic fatigue syndrome and Gulf war syndrome.
Sign Up Log in E Ellie Follow Credit: At Western Washington University Confessions of a Diet Coke-a-holic Pin It Add to Collection To add this article to a collection, you must be logged in. I have liked soda since I was a kid, when my parents would let me have it once in a while for a treat. Canned is a wonderful way to store Diet Coke because it always tastes so fresh when you drink it, no matter how long you may have had it in your fridge. Like coffee, tea, beer, wine, and so on, there are certain ways Diet Coke is produced that taste better than others. At worst, boyfriends have been dispatched late at night in sheeting rain to find me a cold, silver can. It is usually the first thing to pass my lips in the morning and, often, the last thing I taste at night. The hardest situation for a Diet Coke addict is when a certain question is asked. I am known for my Diet Coke addiction by all my friends, and some of my family too. For someone who has never been on a diet, I drink an enormous amount of Diet Coke. I blame late nights spent studying for university exams when I needed regular swigs from a two-litre bottle to prevent me slumping over my desk. I drank mineral water that day, but soon resumed my ritual. If I could, I would drink Diet Coke from the moment I woke up until the moment I go to bed. The fanatics at aspartamekills. By 11 in the morning I usually crack, and head toward the closest Diet Coke I can find. The obsession with liver cleansing diets, yoga and wheatgrass shots was still a few years off.
