thoughts on diet coke

i just paid HK$9 for a diet coke, or about US$1.15. i actually think it was a “coca cola light”, which is how diet coke is branded in parts of asia. to those of us on western incomes, in developed countries, that price is pretty close to zero; buying one daily comes to less than a percent of your income. there aren’t many things you can buy that are much cheaper.

diet coke has zero calories. it contains no sugar, no fat, no protein, and has all but zero nutritional value. it contains caffeine in small enough doses that you typically don’t have to think about what time of day you drink it. the only downside to drinking it that i can think of is that the phosphoric acid is bad for your teeth.

what is the upside? there’s the caffeine, but as previously mentioned it’s a small dose, and there are more effective media for caffeine intake.

diet coke reminds me of vaping (of which i am 2 months clean, as of writing). it’s roughly free in the biological sense: none of the cancer risk associated with tobacco. there is also very little upside to vaping; after a short period of using nicotine, tolerance vastly blunts any of the actual effects. diet coke at least does not have the withdrawals nicotine does.

as a child, i remember only rarely drinking full sugar coke, and as an adult i do not like it. full sugar sodas have a somewhat astringent texture. coke zero, which attempts to replicate standard coke more closely than diet coke, avoids this, but is still too sweet.

when at a restaurant fancy enough to ask me “still or sparkling”, i will often choose sparkling purely for the novelty. but sparkling water on its own can taste slightly sour, because there is nothing to balance the carbonic acid.

since moving to hong kong, i’ve found a drink here called “coke plus”. i’ve tried it a few times, because diet coke is less common here and coke plus tastes pretty similar. i looked into it and coke plus is a similar formulation, but has 5 grams of dietary fibre. isn’t that wild? it’s not just “not bad for you” but now actively good for you.