Like, the nutrition facts table says it contains nothing other than some sodium. No sugars or fats or calories at all
Yet it clearly is edible, so what is it? Some concoction made mostly from indigestible minerals?
water, acids for the sour taste, coloring, caffeine and sweetener that is more effective than sugar and just activates the sweet taste buds, but has no significant nutritiinal value.
you also forgot the coke-leaves extracts. (“natural flavors”)
How is this the top comment… Sodas are flavor extracts at their core. The amount of other things are just there to balance or optimize those core flavors. Sweet, salty, acidic, viscosity, color, fizz… All choices on top of the flavor extracts. Diet soda just substitutes sugar for low calorie sweeteners.
they add a little nuance, but their quantity is not relevant for nutritional value, which is what OP asked about
For which the original answer is insufficient, but I guess my clarification wasn’t eli5. The flavoring extracts do contribute calories but they are too low to be reportable by federal standards and many artificial sweeteners also have calories but are also too low to report.
Aspartame has about the same amount of calories as sugar (4kcal per gram). But it’s much more sweet so you need very little of it. So there is a very tiny amount of sweetener which does contain calories but it’s rounded down to 0.
The difference is also big enough that cans of diet coke float and regular sink.
You son of a bitch…now I gotta buy a can of diet coke, and a can of coke.
I don’t even LIKE diet coke! But I gotta know if you’re full of shit…
Well, this will be my next party trick somehow.
If memory serves a 12oz can is just a little under 1/2 calorie.
If tens of thousands of commercials I heard in the 80s were right…
“Less than a calorie, Diet Coke!”
Just for the taste of it!
egg white is 90% water. it doesn’t take much to drastically alter water
The person that typed this comment is about 60% water.
Extreme dehydration, kindly drink 10% more water
You ugly bag of mostly water…
https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/769164/nutrients
INGREDIENTS: CARBONATED WATER, CARAMEL COLOR, ASPARTAME, PHOSPHORIC ACID, POTASSIUM BENZOATE (TO PROTECT TASTE), NATURAL FLAVORS, CITRIC ACID, CAFFEINE.
In Australia they give (from largest to smallest):
Ingredients
- Carbonated Water
- Colour (150d)
- Food Acids (338, 330)
- Sweeteners (951, 950)
- Flavour
- Caffeine
With the numbers corresponding to:
- 150d - soft-drink caramel
- 338 - phosphoric acid
- 330 - citric acid
- 951 - Aspartame
- 950 - Acesulfame potassium
The nutrition panel only captures a subset of important bioavailable nutrients.
For example, water is obviously a digestible nutrient, but is not represented there on.
Exactly, the nutrition label isn’t a list of all substances found by chemical analysis, it’s literally just the most important “nutrition” information
I believe its mostly soda water and caramel coloring (no duh)
The sweetness is from aspartame, a very common artificial zero-calorie sweetener.
Aside from that it’s gonna be a (trade secret, they’ll never tell us) mixture of artificial and natural flavorings. All virtually zero calorie, and probably in very small amounts.
what is in it is listed in the ingredients list.
What??
It’s a rough read, but it checks out. Completely coherent.
Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?
It’s a cola with an artificial sweetener. There’s lots of misinformation out there about diet soda. It mostly passes through you, unlike regular soda which has lots of sugar that your body stores as fat. Not to say either one is healthy because it most certainly is not. However, phosphoric acid in cola (both regular and diet) can lead to an increased risk of kidney stones. In case anyone is wondering I do not work for big soda, I’ve just read way too much about this topic. That being said please drink more water. Unsweetened tea or black coffee is also acceptable. Anything is fine in moderation. Soda is supposed to be a treat enjoyed once in a while, now it’s a mass market product that is way too accessible. And no diet soda does not cause cancer, please stop citing a garbage study that has been disproven every subsequent trial.
I wasn’t even under the illusion that it would be good for me, lol.
Even IF Diet Coke is a sometimes drink for me, that ‘sometimes’ means ‘once every saturday’ – It’ll probably give me diabetes long-term but y’know. Some people ruin their livers with alcohol, some people fuck their lungs with cigs, I’m screwing up my pancreas with diet soda. 🤷
Ok so cite the study thats not bought from the big drink factories that proves you don’t get cancer from diet soda. Let’s see your proof.
It’s all about how they sweeten the drink. Regular coke uses corn syrup while diet coke uses aspartame. This allows the diet coke to have no calories.
Yeah but Coke isn’t JUST sweeteners (it’s real sugar over here u-u) and water. At least according to the ingredients list, there’s like, the extract of a weird nut (the Cola nut!), you’d think that would have some sugars and ~organic bits~ (proteins? Idk) of its own
Kinda like how juices with “no added sugar” still have some calories, idk
It’s so little per serving they’re permitted to not list it.
It’s like 0 calories - they’re permitted to say that when it’s below a certain level, per serving that (I think) it’s in the error range of measurement.
I seem to recall that if the total calories are below a certain point they’re still allowed to call it “zero calorie”. Diet Coke is mostly water which has no calories and all the other ingredients probably amount to like 2 or 3 calories total. Since that’s considered a negligible amount they just list it as zero
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Yes there are more differences and there’s likely different recipes based on where you live. But the main one, from my understanding, is what I said in my original comment.
Kinda like how juices with “no added sugar” still have some calories
That’s because fruits naturally have sugar in them.
I think of it as a flavored seltzer.
Aspartame is the sweet flavor and unspecified “natural flavors” do the rest.
I don’t drink it often anymore, but it’s great for a no calorie treat. No it won’t give you diabetes but you shouldn’t drink it instead of water. It isn’t water.
For that, look at the ingredients list, not the “nutrition facts”.
As I understand diet coke uses sucralose, not aspartame as sweetener.
Sucralose has a different sweetness profile, much closer to real sugar and is not bitter. Compared to aspartame in zero/light that needs 0.2g salt/liter to cover up the bitterness.
This is not correct.
Diet Coke definitely still uses aspartame and not sucralose.
Okay not all Diet Coke uses sucralose, but you can still buy Diet Coke with Splenda https://www.cokesolutions.com/products/brands/diet-coke/diet-coke-with-splenda.html
I would advise avoiding things with sucralose.
I see that the study uses 48mg sucralose in 60ml water amounting to 0.8g/liter.
My Cola recipe with pure sucralose uses 0.167g/liter this should be equivalent to normal soda sweetness of 100g sugar/liter.
The issue I had with sucralose was that it seemed to go out of solution in the syrup that’s why my current Cola recipe uses a mix of sucralose/saccharin/stevia in the ratio of 30/30/40 which amounts to 0.05g sucralose/liter so if I drink 1 liter of soda I’ll get the same amount as their study.
The reason I continue to use sucralose is that it rounds out the flavor of saccharin and stevia.
So, what you meant to say was that there also exists a version of diet coke with sucralose instead of aspartame?
It’s mostly molasses and baby shite.
Asparthame = Cancer
Aspartame consists of two amino acids (L-phenylalanine and L-aspartic acid). It is hydrolyzed and absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract (GI) through the action of esterase and peptidases. Digestion releases methanol (10%), aspartic acid (40%) and phenylalanine (50%) (Table 1), which are absorbable in the intestinal mucosa [10]. These metabolites can be harmful at high doses and hence prolonged aspartame consumption may be a risk factor
From the paper that you definitely read and understood and didn’t just copy/paste a random line from:
According to current knowledge benefits of aspartame use outweighs the possible side effects, hence this artificial sweetener remains basic excipient in products.
People love to cherry pick this argument so hard.
Aspartame is linked to a possible near zero to low increase in cancer risk. Not zero, theres enough evidence to say that some people if they drink a LOT over a LONG time it COULD cause something that MIGHT not have happened. There are multiple studies on Pubmed I can link to show this. However The evidence on excess sugar and carrying excess weight is ABSOLUTELY UNDENIABLE. The negative health outcomes for being overweight or having diabetes are just straight up facts.
So pick your poison, if you have a family history of bladder, bowel, stomach or colon cancer you may want to avoid the aspartame. If your doctor has just told you you have pre-diabetes and you’re going to lose your foot or have a massive heart attack if you don’t cut out the sugar and lose some fucking weight the minuscule risk of something thats an outside chance vs that…
Bro aspartame is one of the most studied substances on earth and they all point to your claim being bullshit. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/timeline-selected-fda-activities-and-significant-events-addressing-aspartame
Well then drink up my friend— and wash it down with a cigarette!
Yeah, this comment is the real cancer.
This comment is DogPeePoo.
Drinking a can of diet coke a day has the same cancer risk factor as going on a daily walk near a road
I’d be surprised if it’s even that high. Just going outside would spike your chance of skin cancer.
Aspartame is, by far, the most tested food additive ever made. There have been no causal links to cancer ever proven when consumed at recommended levels. Not ever.
Not saying people should start chugging it down en masse, but your own quote there makes it sound pretty far from equalling cancer.
Which part of risk factor is confusing?
You’re clearly the only one who is confused
Aspartame is very mildly carcinogenic. An equivalent amount of sugar is much more carcinogenic, and is harmful in other ways, too. If you have to have a can of cola, diet is the healthier choice.
That last part isn’t true.
You can’t ignore the effects of artificial sweeteners on insulin levels and the fallout from that.
Truth is that drinking over sweetened water is just not healthy at all, it’s a matter of picking what problems you want to get from them
Based on a quick google search, the jury is out on whether artificial sweeteners affect blood sugar and insulin at all.
A study from the National Library of Medicine says they do but cites no source and the study itself isn’t reaaly about that; it does demonstrate that diabetics that drink artificial sweeteners have higher insulin resistance, but is that a causal relationship? If so, which is causing which?
The mayo clinic says straight up that artificial sweeteners don’t affect blood sugar at all.
There is a response to release insulin purely on tasting something sweet that’s been demonstrated in some mammals using artificial sweeteners, but nobody’s been able to consistently reproduce it in humans.
So… Eh? If there’s any kind of scientific consensus on this it isn’t clear to the layperson. Maybe I’ll start measuring my blood sugar before and after having a coke zero just to see for myself.
Personally, I can ignore the effects of artificial sweeteners on insulin levels as they, like everything else, have no effect, and my insulin levels are only affected by when I inject it. I’m type 1 diabetic. When people make incorrect claims based on effects that aren’t reproducible or weren’t statistically significant in the first place about the safety of sweeteners, it causes direct problems for me. I’ve had bartenders mess up my blood sugar levels by lying about serving diet drinks because they think they’re dangerous. Plus, if the people who push for artificial sweeteners to be banned had their way, there are plenty of things I couldn’t ever eat or drink again.
It’s worse than that. AFAIK, the WHO doesn’t have a list of “does not cause cancer”. Aspartame is on the least problematic category even when you disregard the effect size.
Others have cited sources about how wrong you are. It’s also just common sense. With the sheer amount of diet soda that the world drinks, it would be fairly obvious by now if aspartame was significantly carcinogenic.
Even the text you quoted (but didn’t cite, not helpful) only says that prolonged exposure may be a risk factor. Quite a leap to then say that “aspartame = cancer”
