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The Soda Situation - Succulent Drinks w/o the Sweets?
Ticron asks: "Like most of you, my job and lifestyle revolves around drinking lots and lots of caffeine - usually in the form of soda. I've been trying to cut back on my sugar intake lately, and am interested in what some of you drink that isn't loaded down with the sweet stuff. Diet drinks have little to no flavor, and fruit punches have almost (sometimes more!) sugar than sodas themselves. Is there anything out there that maintains the convenience of a canned drink, but without all the sugar?"
to a good friend of mine called Diet Mountain Dew... Ah... Let me count the ways...
As long as it's not in exploding cans. Okay, maybe you're not a hot coffee guy so brew up a pot and put it in a pitcher. Toss it in the fridge. A glass of ice, dash of milk, bam!! Iced cofee!! Happy chuggin'
I'm fortunate that my company provides free tea and coffee. I don't drink much coffee, but I'm a tea-fiend. I have a liter lexan (Nalgene) bottle and I put 1 "english breakfast" and 1 "earl grey" tea bag in, and pour in about 1/5 liter of boiling water (out of the coffee pot - it has a bypass spigot).
Let that sit for a couple minutes, put in a spoon of sugar, fill to 4/5ths full with water and top with ice. A great refreshing caffeinated drink. The sugar's not necessary, but it's a small amount and gives it just the right flavor.
I save tons on the soda I would normally buy.
Actually, fructose is the problem with corn syrup, specifically high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
You see fructose doesn't raise your glucose levels because your body can use it without the need for insulin. Unfortunately, this means your liver can process it into triglycerides really quickly and your fat cells can suck it up rapidly too; this is why corn syrup is linked to obesity.
I wouldn't stress too much about fruit juice in the diet, though. You'd be better off drinking water and eating fruit, but it's still a lot better for you than carbonated beverages.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I actually like Crystal Light Orange drink and lemon drink. They are fairly sweet tasting, but the sugar intake isn't so bad. They also come in neat single services that you can put in bottled water.
Buy a home soda maker from Soda Club. It's basically a plastic case around an aluminum CO2 canister. There's a good selection of flavors with near-replacements for the big ones: coke, dr pepper, mountain dew, root beer. You screw the bottle of tap water on, press the button a few times until it buzzes, unscrew it, and pour in a capful of syrup.
I bought one because the drinks are flavored with Splenda and have 1/3 the calories. The regular ones still have some high fructose corn syrup in. Because you're mixing the syrup and selzter yourself you can adjust the carbonation and sweetness to your taste. I make it quite a bit less sweet and with less carbonation than store-bought, and I've been really happy with it.
There is also a cost savings argument. I haven't sat down and checked it myself, but it's on the site somewhere. Cheaper or not, I'm glad I don't have to deal with recycling two-liter bottles and aluminum cans all the time. Although I mostly drink the diet mountain dew flavor, it's nice that I can make some root beer, orange drink, or something obscure when I feel like it.
Anyway, I love the thing. But let me assure you they are not kidding when the warning says to add syrup only after carbonating the water. God help you if you put any syrup in first. You get a real nice soda fountain when you unscrew it to the great and undying hilarity of everyone around.
Stop the Slashdot Effect! Don't read the articles!
How bout... nothing?
Seriously, I have never understood the thing that IT people have for sucking down caffeine all day long. I don't drink coffee -- EVER -- and I rarely drink hot tea. Even when I do drink tea, it's decaffeinated (Tazo Passion is my favorite), or it's the once a week or so that I go to a restaurant and get iced tea. I drink maybe eight cans of soda per week, and that includes the five that I have with lunch, which are usually things like ginger ale. I'm cutting down even on that in favor of Gatorade that I buy in powdered format, mix up at night, and take cold to work in the morning in a Thermos. On random occasions, I'll have a Dr Pepper or a Coke, but by and large, from the time I leave my apartment to the time I leave for lunch, I don't drink anything. The same goes for the time from the end of lunch to about the time when I get home, around six hours later.
At one time, I drank a couple of cans a day per eight-hour shift, but then about five years ago, I just decided to not do it. That was it. Productivity isn't hurt, and I don't find myself needing another pickup later in the day (or in the morning, for that matter).
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
It was almost flat. There was almost no fizz in the bottle at all. Giving the benefit of the doubt, I bought another bottle of it. Maybe the first one was just bad? Nope. Second one was flat too.
I wish it were a tastier product, I'd love to buy more.
Dancing may not cause cancer... then again it might, seeing as I am dancing the give-gullible-people-head-cancer-dance.
Come off it. Most of this aspartame-is-lethal crap is due to an internet hoax email and a bunch of unscrupulous "alternative therapy practitioners". Your link goes to holisticmed.com! Funny how it's all "energy flow" and "meridians" and "magnetism" and "special chinese herbs" and "homeopathy" until they want to scare someone off something - then they pull out the list of scary chemical names of poisons, because scared people tend not to engage their brain. Hmm.
Methanol is dangerous because it converts to formaldehyde - but it's funny how both are mentioned; sounds twice as scary that way! (oh, was that the point, hmm?)
Even if aspartame does produce formaldehyde it's not in any great quantity - aspartame works by being about 200 times sweeter than sugar, so only a miniscule amount is required. Even those small Equal tablets are largely buffer compound; if they were just pure aspartame they'd be too damn small to handle. And even then only 10% of that is potentially convertible; but there is disagreement as to whether that really is the end product.
ur rite, no cancer, just eventual chronic methanol poisoning leading to something very like multiple sclerosis.
Have fun in your "aspartame is good" fantasy world. And added bonus, research where a lot of the money goes, one of probably your favorite humanitarian politicians pockets.
"Talking Rain" is another similar brand in the Northwest US. I drink *lots* of it -- no sugar, no horrid artifical sweeteners. It is fizzy and has some fruit oils in it to make it tastier than tap water. (Lemon-lime is pretty good)
:( It just comes in 2 liter bottles.
Canada Dry (IIRC) has some even better flavored seltzers -- "cranberry limelight" and "rasberry" both rock. I wish they had it in cans
Huuuuge agreement with parent here. I used to drink 2-4 cans of coke a day at work and, while it tasted great and was convenient, it was completely unjustifiable in terms of cost... both to my wallet and my body. Best thing I ever did was switch to drinking mostly water. Oh I know, I was one of those "it don't got no taaste" people too. But I really wasn't craving any kind of beverage, I just needed something to nibble on for flavour. Fresh fruit works great, but you can try anything from mints to cereals (avoiding the Count-Chocula stuff, of course). Then just sip on some water throughout the day. You'll get used to it pretty quickly. Its an amazingly easy habit to keep once you train yourself to head for the water cooler instead of the vending machines.
Just acknowledge that colas and coffees are treats, not meals (and designer waters are plain stupid). Your body will thank you for it.
I also favor Splenda over Nutrasweet (Aspartame) every time. Which do you prefer, sucralose's looser bowel movements, or aspartame's headaches? The U.S. Air Force tells pilots not to drink Nutrasweet/Aspartame, as it slows the responses of their nervous systems.
I stopped drinking non-diet soda-pop years ago, and now depend on diet cola (Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, Faygo, and lime/lemon/cherry/vanilla mutations) for my caffeine intake, and I find them quite tasty. Buying whichever one's on sale and switching in the variant flavors helps keep them "fresh". In the rare event that there's no diet cola available (and no tea, my backup caffeine supply) and I have to drink a "regular" cola instead, it tastes like the cloying sticky fructose bomb that it is, and I seriously want to go brush my teeth to get the taste out of my mouth.
Go try flavored waters or whatever else people suggest if you want. Nothing wrong with them. But I suspect you'll constantly feel like a steak-lover eating vegetables he's never had before instead of something he knows he likes. Unless you want to constantly feel like you're "on a diet" (and for some people that works), you're just setting yourself up for failure there. If you like cola, go ahead and keep drinking cola... just detox yourself from the sugar-laced crap.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
In regards to the grandparent post, I prefer to make a pot at a time. When I'm alone, a pot will last for a while. With other people, offering a fresh cup of tea will make you very popular, especially if you're even remotely competant at making tea. Also, if you make a pot, it's much easier to use loose tea. Loose tea is almost always superior to bags, if much less convenient.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Over the past eight years I've gone from 245 lbs to 152 lbs. It's been a very slow process of ups and downs, putting weight on and taking weight off but I've finally modified my relationship with food so that it is just fuel now. My diet is mostly made up of vegatables [lots and lots of spinach, the stuff cleans your system out like none other plus has a ton of really good thigns it...I highly recommend it], oatmeal and then for lunch I make sure to get something with protein like chicken, fish or turkey. I try and avoid burgers and the geeks best friend, Pizza, has become my worst nemesis. Two slices of pepporoni pizza and my stomach is upset for the rest of the day.
I never thought that I could change my body the way I have but through persistance and hard work I have; good luck with it man. It's well worth the pay off.
On topic, green tea has become my drink of choice. It's chalk full flavonoids which according to wikipedia "Flavonoids have been referred to as 'nature's biological response modifiers' because of strong experimental evidence of their ability to modify the body's reaction to allergens, viruses, and carcinogens. They show anti-allergic, anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial and anti-cancer activity. In addition, flavonoids act as powerful antioxidants, protecting against oxidative and free radical damage." According to my Lipton tea box there are 190mg of Flavonoid which besides Black Tea there's nothing even close to that. It also has no calories plus it gives you a nice pick-me-up but it's not like Coffee where you feel cracked out; it's quite mellow.
We all taste this stuff differently, or so it appears. I find that diet coke with splenda tastes very much like normal diet coke, except without the aspartame aftertaste, which is the only thing that ruins normal diet coke for me (at least in terms of flavor - I'm kind of scared of aspartame.) For those who haven't already tried it, it's quite good. However, it also features caffeine, and for those trying to reduce their caffeine intake, it won't help.
For those people, I suggest a non-caffeinated tea, maybe with a little milk. Or, if you're the type who drinks soy, there's a fantastic product called Silk Creamer. I forget who makes it, maybe vitasoy? Silk soy milk is very much like milk. Silk Creamer soy milk is very much like cream, and I don't even like soy. I do try to avoid consuming much of it, because soy contains phytoestrogens which are not good for men. Probably doesn't matter in tiny quantities, but probably does matter if you eat a lot of the stuff. A University of Hawaii study showed increased alzheimer's risk in men (specifically males) who eat a lot of soy products.
Finally, there is the option of making italian-style sodas. Add syrup to seltzer water and bingo! Many companies make sugar free flavored syrups, including Torani (easily the most recognizable name in this market.) Torani in particular uses splenda, not aspartame.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In college, about 4 or 5 years ago, I went on a vacation to Europe and brought back a Coke from each country (as well as a Dr. Pepper.) In chem we had fun testing them for differences.
The syrup formulations are most definately different between some areas. European Coke tends to use cane sugar instead of High Fructose Corn syrup. Also, different countries tended to use different added sweeteners such as Sucralose or Ace K. The carmel coloring, and it's prortions appears to be different as well. Mineral content was much higher in the European sodas, especially phosphorus. The European sodas were less acidic.
I do remember that in our informal, small-sample "taste test", UK Coke and Dr Pepper were chosen as the "best" 100% of the time, and most people could distinguish the US versions from the others, but all the mainland European Coke's tasted pretty much the same. Of course, we were all Americans, so it's not like it was really scientific.
Personally, when I get over to Britain, I love a Coke and a Snickers.. and I don't drink/consume those items here. I think it's the difference in sugars.