Coke is bad for you; it makes you fat. So Diet Coke is bad for you and doesn't make you fat? The original diet products were much more a marketing scheme than an answer to a growing health concern. So what's the difference between Coke and Diet Coke? Well aside from the relatively unknown fact that they use entirely different formulas, the main difference is the substitution of high fructose corn syrup in Coke with other sweeteners, primarily aspartame, in Diet Coke. And why doesn't Diet Coke have any calories? Because high fructose corn syrup is the only ingredient in Coke that contains calories.
Does anybody else ever wonder how drinking one can of garbage could possibly be less fattening or "better for you" than drinking a can of a different garbage? Well, I'm curious. Aside from a few people who pick Diet Coke because they somehow like the taste better, the bulk of diet soda drinkers choose "diet" because they actually believe it's better for them. Seriously?! That's about as ignorant as choosing chewing tobacco over cigarettes for the same reason. But people do it anyway because it's "diet" and has no calories. Which makes me wonder, what the hell is a calorie anyway? (Don't worry, I looked it up.) A calorie in food is just a unit for measuring energy. Seems kind of ridiculous. We all know that eating a small McDonalds fries containing 220 calories is less healthy than eating a pear and a banana, which together, also contain 220 calories. But Diet Coke is obviously no better for you than regular Coke and they vary greatly in calories. So why is the same word still used to describe different kinds of energy?
Conclusion: The word calorie has somehow become a gross over-generalization of many different energy values contained in food. Most people appear to be oblivious to this and continue to be mislead by labels which, strangely enough, are required on almost all food products. Considering this is a rather serious health issue and affects anyone exposed to packaged foods, it seems like some effort should have been made to categorize or specify the different values of food energy which collectively remain described by this one deceptive word. Just sayin'.
5 comments:
Technically speaking there is really only one kind of energy defined in physics, and that is exactly what calories are measuring. Calories can be directly converted into joules, the same unit used to measure the energy density of gasoline, batteries, or any other energy input/output in a system. Calories come from carbs, fats, and proteins, and have nothing to do with vitamins, minerals, or any other nutritional aspects of food. Measuring calories are important for reducing food energy intake below your body’s ability to burn the energy instead of storing it as fat. Measuring nutritional value is also important, but that’s why there are all those other categories listed on the food label :-P These are all scientific terms with exact meanings, but unfortunately nobody has come up with a way to measure food “goodness” yet.
And as for Diet Coke having zero calories, that is not exactly correct. The trick for artificial sweeteners is that they are designed to be much more potent in terms of “perceived sweetness” than their natural counterparts, usually on the order of 100 to 10,000 times as sweet per unit than regular sugar. This means that to make diet coke taste like regular coke they only need a small amount of sweetener resulting in less than one full calorie per can (my bet is 0.49 calories). Interesting side note: While they may end up giving you cancer, some artificial sweeteners will save your teeth, since even bacteria can’t break them down like they do with regular sugar.
I think this is simply another case where most people are not informed enough about what is being listed on the label and what their body needs to operate efficiently. Ask any nutritionalist that has actually taken a biology and chemistry class, and I’m sure they would be happy to explain each and every item on a food label to show why the pear and banana is better than a can of coke. And sure, you could try to make a better label, but good luck with that. As the saying goes: if you try to make something idiot proof, someone will just build a better idiot!
Thank you for the clarification. This post was the result of an uneducated, observation-based thought that had crossed my mind a few times (as warned of by my blog title and description). Obviously very little research contributed to its creation. If nothing else, this post in its inaccuracy, is in and of itself a testament to how misunderstood the calorie is.
No worries... Keep the observations coming! Obviously many people are misinformed or simply don't care. I by no means am any sort of expert, but I do spend entirely too much time online and tend to research odd subjects when I get bored. For instance this gives a glimse into what happens when you drink a coke:
http://www.blisstree.com/healthbolt/what-happens-to-your-body-if-you-drink-a-coke-right-now/
I will. And again thanks for the input. I maintain this blog partially in hopes of evoking outside opinions to help extend my knowledge and understanding of things.
You realize I have just graduated from a Health Supportive Culinary School in New York... right?
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