Rock on! Old folks for water!

That's so disgusting... But now I'm really curious as to what they taste like, really. Hmmm...

Edit - Someone did a taste test and review!

When the caffeine kick is necessary...Mountain Dew or anything orange.

But really, I'm addicted to tea. Cabinet full of about twenty five flavors. The best of those? Straight up green tea, or lemon or ginger. Healthier, too. Goes great with an apple or salad snack. -eyeshift-

Heretic... Everyone knows Earl Grey rules over all.

The British, perhaps, think that.

Personally, I'd take a good Irish breakfast tea over Earl Grey any day.

It's like coffee, only it's a tea. And it is GREAT for hangovers.

Soda is not unhealthy, if you limit yourself to 12-20ozs a day. What causes the health problems with soda is people drink it as a substitute to water, and or juices.

If you drink a lot of soda, you will kill you stomach lining, and esophagus lining, which can lead to all so pleasant ulcers and heart burn. However, the damage to teeth, like the evidence for second hand smoke, is a medium range correlation. In other words, a pattern only emerges when a huge sample is taken, and you broaden the margins.

So in other words, like everything, take it in small amounts and you will be fine. Besides, I can never give up my Tropical Grenadine Spiked Coke :-p

Diet soda is basically water - Flavoured, caffeinated, carbonated, and with some phospohoric and/or citric acid in it. It's not particularly acidic - You'd have to ingest a preposterous amount to lower the PH in your stomach to the point it would burn through your stomach lining. Remember your stomach spends most of its time filled with hydrochloric acid, which is more corrosive and acidic than anything we put on our food in reasonable concentrations (With good reason, of course, since it can burn right through less acid-resistant parts of you, and often does burn through one's stomach, causing ulcers). Caffeine is also only dangerous in very high concentrations, and most people who drink coffee, tea, or soda regularly develop a degree of insensitivity to it. Soda is perfectly safe to drink in reasonable amounts.

Ok, thats just silly. Anybody who drinks soda, is going to drink more than 20ozs a day. If you drink soda, you will drink 20oz a meal. So Soda is unhealthy, since the daily dose of Soda is large. Just like "fat" isn't really unhealthy, its just when you "have too much of it"... however, the normal amount of fat that you have in fast food is "too much of it."

I can no longer drink soda, can't have sugar, can't have carbonation and can't have caffeine, and can't have alchohol. Which means that right now I can have Water, and Water with light amounts of decaf tea (Reason for this is some nasty stomach thing I have) In the past 2 weeks, I have lost over 10 pounds because of these restrictions.

So I don't buy the argument that "soda is not unhealthy." I will agree however that soda tastes really good, is no different than most juices and isn't going to kill you. But removing soda from your diet, and replacing it entirely with water improves your health a lot.

As for diet drinks, the aspartame and caffeine, and carbonation alone can really mess up your stomach.

Ok, thats just silly. Anybody who drinks soda, is going to drink more than 20ozs a day. If you drink soda, you will drink 20oz a meal. So Soda is unhealthy, since the daily dose of Soda is large. Just like "fat" isn't really unhealthy, its just when you "have too much of it"... however, the normal amount of fat that you have in fast food is "too much of it."

I can no longer drink soda, can't have sugar, can't have carbonation and can't have caffeine, and can't have alchohol. Which means that right now I can have Water, and Water with light amounts of decaf tea (Reason for this is some nasty stomach thing I have) In the past 2 weeks, I have lost over 10 pounds because of these restrictions.

So I don't buy the argument that "soda is not unhealthy." I will agree however that soda tastes really good, is no different than most juices and isn't going to kill you. But removing soda from your diet, and replacing it entirely with water improves your health a lot.

As for diet drinks, the aspartame and caffeine, and carbonation alone can really mess up your stomach.

How do you figure that, exactly, that anyone who drinks soda is going to drink more than 20ozs a day? I drink soda, but I buy the smallest bottle possible (because I know it's not good for you and I just like the taste) when I feel like having soda, which is really not more than once a week, if that. But I'm not normal. Still, how are you getting your figures, because based on what I do, its not true.

OMFG! No Redbull on the list?! What kind of carbonated beverages list has no Redbull?! Redbull FTW!!! Redbull gives you wings and stimulates body and mind!! Is 16 cans in one day too much? *eyetwitch*

Plus, what other carbonated beverage has the supercool Redbull Flugtag event?!

Redbull, Vault, Rockstar, MX...I have tried them all.

One can/bottle of any gives me a pounding headache, a feeling like I'm going to throw up, the shakes, and numb fingers.

They are THE MOST UNHEALTHY thing you could possibly drink, and really, none of them taste all that good. And are even more dangerous and gross mixed with alcohol.

As far as Callia's comment about the damage done to ones teeth from soda and smoking, it's only if you don't take care of your teeth...I'm a pack and a half a day smoker and fanatical about hygiene...I have cavity free pearly whites!

Of course, you asked every single person who drinks soda in the universe and assessed their habits. Also, fat is not just not bad for you, but also a necessary component of a balanced diet. You're supposed to eat a reasonable amount of it. And trying to cut fat entirely out of your diet would put you on a radical vegetarian diet which would be extremely poor in protein, and could potentially kill you.
Actually, caffeine helps you lose weight.

Juices, soda, and milk are mostly water, and there's nothing unhealthy about drinking tea, milk and juices exclusively, as long as you keep in mind that you are ingesting some of your sugar, fat, and protein from liquids, and should cut back slightly on the food.

Diet sodas don't contain aspartame, and caffeine isn't bad for you in moderate doses - moderate meaning something between 200mg and 400mg, which is what most people drink anyway. It's necessary that you increase your stomach acidity consistently and frequently to develop a peptic ulcer. Some people, of course, are more sensitive than others. Carbonation is as far as I know utterly innocuous - Are there any scientific studies on the subject of it messing up your stomach lining?

I've had Red Bull with no ill effects, which just goes to show how scarily resistant to caffeine I am... but it tastes horrid, like the carbonated, unflavoured, dilluted cough medicine it is.

How true, my worst ever alchohol related incident was when Redbull and Vodka first caught on in the pubs over here. Actually I hardly drink it anymore because of the health reasons! The 16 cans was my record although I had a good reason for drinking that much at the time. I had a 1400 page book to study in 18 hours before an exam. Read from 3pm in the afternoon till 5am in the morning. Woke up at 6.30am, read until my exam at 9am, passed it in half the time, went to work for the afternoon, got home and spent the next day in bed recovering. These days I have a calendar to tell me when my exams/deadlines are, so that I won't leave it till the day before.

I love that sweet sickly smell and taste of Redbull. Before I forced myself to give it up, I used to start the day with 2 cans for breakfast.

Addicted you say?! Rubbish I can give it up anytime, I just don't want to.

http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/

All diet soda, unless they changed it, uses nutrasweet, which is aspartame.



Now since we know that not every man woman and child drinks coke, that means that each person that did drink coke, drank more than 12 ounces a day.

Aah, it seems I was wrong. Some diet soda contains aspartame, some don't, most uses it only partially but does contain. A can of diet pepsi contains about 35mg of it. That website is about the suspicious practice of 'holistic medicine', which is a mix of numerous 'alternative' practices, most of which have been so thoroughly debunked as sheer, unadulterated quackery, mixed with an always healthy dose of guilt and fear about food products and additives; it's not a trustworthy source. The scare relating to aspartame seems to have been at least in part fabricated. Nothing is, of course, 100% safe to consume, but the notion that aspartame is dangerous doesn't seem to have much corroborating evidence. Some people display reactions to it, usually involving mild nausea, but actual medical conditions never develop. Particularly, there is no association between aspartame and any stomach condition at all.

Your reasoning is so horrifyingly flawed, I don't even feel compelled to debunk you. Let's think about averages here a while. I feel a number coming out of my arse... Oh, here it is. Say, 50% of the US population drinks some sort of carbonated soft drink beverage daily (Probably more, but again, this is a number pulled out of my arse). For the sake of argument, of course, we're going to assume everyone drinks the same amount every day. That works out to 2 12-ounce cans per man, woman, and child - 24 ounces. If you assume half those people drink 12 ounces a day, the rest will be drinking a whopping 36 ounces! Panic and mass hysteria, right?! But regardless, not everyone drinks more than twelve ounces a day. Unless you believe every family in the US has 2.5 children, and that every woman in the world is 5% pregnant.

Additionally, the 'safe' levels for consumption of anything vary so wildly from person to person claiming that setting rigid limits is bizarre. Children probably shouldn't be allowed more than 12 ounces a day, but adults could very well drink 24, 36, 48 or even 60 ounces every day with no ill effects. This is one reason the whole business of nutritional research and what is 'bad' and 'good' for you is highly dodgy, and any such information needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Almost every substance we ingest could be proven to have ill effects, but most of us will die before they start to manifest in any mensurable levels.

*blink* You forgot seltzer. Seltzer is good, and it's no so overpoweringly sweet, so I can actually taste what I'm eating with it. Oh, and in my not so rare moments of temporary insanity, I realized that selter in a can shoots a foot or two more than pop when a Mentos is added.

Diet Coke shoots further... Mythbuster proved it... and my only negative citation in the Navy proves it too... (Captain was not supposed to be on the ship that day...)

Anyways, let me break out my chemistry here... Hydrochloric acid is one of the WEAKEST acids... it is just the most easily obtained, and thus the most known about. Furthermore, the lining in your stomach is geared specifically to resist hydrochloric acid. Once you add just a little bit of soda, you are already tipping the balance. If you drink a lot, your stomach is defenseless.

Put it this way, coke removes battery acid.... hydrochloric acid sits there...