For decades, drinking a Diet Coke every day gave me a burst of caffeine and satisfaction.
I started popping cans of the stuff in the late 1990s, when I was a teenager. It made me feel like an adult. Once I was a proper adult, refusing to quit — no matter how many people told me I should — made me feel young.
I was a married, employed mom who practiced yoga, gave to charity, and voted in every election. Wasn’t I allowed one relatively harmless vice?
Then I turned 40 and started thinking about my choices. That’s common, I suppose, when you’re caught in the tractor beam of Middle Age. I decided to make three changes at once: walk more, tweet less and, after 25 years, put down the Diet Coke.
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A year later, I was three for three. I hadn’t tweeted or scrolled since well before the bird app became X, though I “liked” various posts that crossed my path. My daily average step count was at 10,000 or more, up from 7,000. I got my buzz from coffee and tea.
And I didn’t feel any different.
Nothing significant about my health, mind or appearance seemed to have changed. Had all this effort been a waste?
I decided to ask the pros — and was surprised to find them unanimous.
‘You did your body a favor, and your brain’
“Your body is very happy,” Michiko Tomioka, a certified nutritionist and longevity expert, told me in a firm and cheerful voice. “I am sure it is. Naturally, you are improving.”
I got the sense that she wanted to supplement my lack of certainty with an excess of her own. But then, Dr. Uma Naidoo — a nutritional psychiatrist and faculty member at Harvard Medical School — agreed.
“You did your body a favor, and your brain,” said Naidoo. “I think it’s fantastic.”
My sense of taste is no longer “tricked” by chemical surges of fake sugar, Naidoo said. Since diet soda is “hyper-sweetened,” just a little bit of it can set off your taste buds and trigger a cascade of deleterious…
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