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You are definitely right about moderation. If you cannot give up drinking soda, then you can consume it moderately. It's not easy to give up something that your body has been used to. I've read about these horror stories too and it can be too annoying sometimes.
My doctors office wall has a large bulletin board covered with research data about how dangerous diet caffeinated drinks are. These articles are scholarly annotated articles. Diet coke style drinks are not good for the human body.
I was drinking at least 3-4 cans of diet pepsi a day. I recently replaced that with water or seltzer. I did this once before where I stopped drinking diet soda for 3 weeks then I caved in. I am going to try it again, it's been 3 days now without diet soda.I just love soda.
Diet sodas and artificial sweeteners are bad news - they give my husband migraines for one thing; and my sister developed MS after years of using tons of artificial junk in her coffee. Those sweeteners are in a class of excitotoxins and they work on your nervous system. I NEVER, ever use any of that junk. I drink plain, carbonated water with nothing added, and regular spring water. Coffee I take black.
My theory is that if you're consuming so much of something that you have to switch to the diet version, you're consuming too much. I don't believe in diet, low fat, low cal anything, I enjoy the regular version in moderation. I have a soft drink once or twice a month and tapering off from when I used to drink more regularly wasn't difficult at all.
The class of excitotoxins also include MSG, often found in many frozen vegetarian dishes, soups, gravies, fast food, etc to give more perceived flavor. True, at least Aspartame can be singled out and eliminated by simply avoiding diet drinks and the blue packets, but there are a host of other culprits out there that have the same effect on the body.
Unless you take the big picture (excitotoxins) serious, eliminating Diet Coke from your diet alone will only lend itself to false gratification.
I love Diet Coke. You can have my DC when you pry it from my cold, dead, arthritis-ridden, brittle-boned hands. I'm an addict and I don't care. If it cuts 10 years off my life, that's ok, they were going to be crappy years anyway, what with my bones breaking and my insides rotting and all.
For years, I drank diet coke instead of water. I probably drank 2 liters a day. When I was 29, I slipped in the mud and broke my leg really badly...it was a spiral fracture, which is more common in motorcycle accidents than a slip-and-fall. I had to have a plate and 9 screws put in, and the doctors told me at the time that if I ever wanted to walk again, I couldn't drink any soda with phosphoric acid in it while I was healing. I had broken several other bones over the years although none as bad as the leg...they said the phosphoric acid leaches the calcium from your bones and that's why I had such a bad break.
After that, I drank diet soda without phosphoric acid...ginger ale doesn't have any, and neither does diet sprite. But lately I've been feeling the need to feed my family better than I used to, and so we've all quit using aspartame. It's been six months and I don't feel much different than I did before, although I crave sweets a lot less and my kids no longer beg for candy bars every time we go to the store. My mother gives me a hard time about it, saying that I'm brainwashed and that all I've done is replace a chemical with a chemical (we're using stevia or honey as sweetener in beverages). I give her a hard time right back, telling her I don't have any poison in my pantry when she asks for an Equal packet for her coffee. (what's the point of drinking a decaf coffee with artficial sweetener and fat-free non-dairy creamer in it? anyhow)
To me, using artificial sweeteners is a personal choice...I'm not going to lecture anyone about it or claim that quitting saved my life
Phosphoric acid is also linked to kidney stones. I usually drink Sprite Zero or Diet 7Up (sometimes WalMarts Diet "Twist-Up").
I know what you mean about the stuff on the internet rivaling Natl Inquirer but I'm grateful that the info is there b/c I personally had a bad reaction to the stuff and didn't know what caused it until I read an article by Betty "the raver" Martini. I had seizures for years and had to take tegretol but still had breakthrough seizures on occasion and wasn't supposed to drive and put off having a career because of it. Then I got pregnant with my first dd and stopped consuming anything with aspartame in it and tried to clean up my diet in general but it was already pretty healthy, and within two months the seizures had stopped and I never had another one and that was over 20 years ago. I might mention that they started in the early 80s in the year they started to put aspartame in sodas. It could have been due to some other reason but I don't think so and I'm unwilling to chance it and I don't drink much soda anyway--it's not a basic food group and has no redeeming value except to add enjoyment, but I drink really good coffee in the morning and that's enough for me.
Oh yeah, and as for moderation? I never had more than 5 diet sodas in a week and generally had fewer. I was already very moderate.
I used to drink diet pop or Crystal Light daily. When I got pregnant my doctor insisted that I stop ingesting anything containing aspartame or any other artificial sweetners because they weren't good for the baby. I did as I was told and have never gone back. One unexpected benefit was my migraines stopped. I'm not sure if the two things are related, but it sure seemed that way.
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