Sick of Soda. Healthier Alternatives (including Diet Coke)
June 9 2022
Hello hello! Welcome to my personal newsletter where I write about all things health and wellness. Have a question you want me to cover, leave a comment below!
This week I’m sending over some brief ideas around a reader question all about Soda, what a common conversation I have with folks. Soda can be such a chaotic conundrum for people, especially when they have grown addictive / dependent upon the caffeine, the bubbly burn in the back of their throat, or the cravings that often come with so called “diet” drinks.
It’s no secret that Diet Coke specifically has a long history for these problematic traits, so too does Mountain Dew. I once worked for a gentleman who would drink 4 diet mountain dew bottles by mid afternoon and would be flabbergasted to be hit with a migraine headache that would leave him incapacitated and often asleep trying to recover.
To his surprise, once he stopped drinking Diet Mountain Dew, his headaches went away, he came to have greater energy, metabolic balance, and be better in natural hormonal regulation without all that excessive caffeine and sweetness hitting his palate.
He got his life back.
So it is with great advocation I can speak to others about the benefits of ditching soda. You too can reap the benefits. You too can get your life back. If you have kids… I beg you to please consider kicking the can altogether in your household. Make it a treat to start off with, only consumed outside the home as a family experience if you’re committed to keep it in your routine, but truly I tell you soda has no place in a healthy human diet if someone is striving to achieve their highest health or recover from chronic disease, lose weight, improve sleep, and a whole host of other maladies in which removing soda should absolutely be pursued.
Years ago, my mom was addicted to Diet Coke, just like many women her age in the Jennifer Aniston era of culture. Nothing against Jennifer of course, but it was just the normal thing in that time. Yet, taken in greater context of overwhelming stress, anxiety, and the wave of 24-hr news, and sparkling screens screaming at users at all hours of the day… Diet Coke does much more damage in the grand scheme of things.
While I can’t get into the whole planogram of how it impacts brain, biology, hormones and hunger for example what I can tell you in brief is that it promotes cravings, disrupts hunger/thirst, leaves you longing for more food, promoting binge eating behaviors or disordered eating patterns as it sparks a brief high of sweetness and caffeine without any nutrition, carried by a “dark cola color” known to deplete nutrients, and leave us mineral deficient.
Thus, the common story follows a pattern of snacking behaviors, cravings more sweets, more snack foods, more crunchy foods, more anxiety, and cyclical chronic loss of health overtime of honest lack of actual nutrition the body needs.
My mom used to “snack” on Nutter Butters, Butter Fingers, Oatmeal Creme Pies, Honey Comb Cereal, and other foods her body and brain were gravitating to in hopes to gather at least some nutrients… in hopes to have vitamins and minerals in those foods that were carrying all kinds of empty calories and sweetness but lacked any real nutrients known to foods found by our ancestors.
You see, in the wild, real food does not come highly sweet and satisfying without any nutrition. Real food comes layered with complex factors, which help our brain and body function at their optimal level. Feeding ourselves silly with “food” and “drinks” that lack real nutrition shouldn’t be labeled as feeding, eating, or drinking at all some suggest. There should not be any conversation of “Junk Food” because real food is not junk and real junk is certainly not food.
So, it is with our biological response that our brain is like “what is going on!? Where’s all the nutrients! You lied to me!!” every time that we eat and receive loads of excess empty calories without meeting our needs for actual nutrition or hydration. I could go on in explanation and mountains of metaphors but I’ll save us the space and eye roll and thumb scroll.
A 20-ounce bottle of ginger ale, regular cola, or lemon-lime pop contains between 55 and 65 grams of sugar
Every 4 grams of Sugar = 1 Teaspoon of Sugar
60g Sugar in one bottle = 15 Teaspoons of Sugar
Many people drink multiple sodas a day, larger sizes, and consume many other forms of sugar, sweets, and snacks each day that quickly add up to overwhelming levels of sugar each day, week, month, year and lifetime.
Soda consumption is a leading risk factor for children developing fatty liver disease, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, obesity.
I’ve written on this so much in the past I’ll save us the time here.
Next!
I’ll briefly bullet out the concepts as to why alternative sweeteners are no bueno too.
Artificial sweeteners interfere with metabolic pathways by sending “sweet” signals to the brain without delivering sugar calories, which releases a metabolic cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters throughout the body but the nutrition building blocks needed to support those chemical messengers is missing. This can lead to problems in listening sensitivity and many other hormonal states of dysregulation.
Artificial Sweeteners paired with caffeine disrupt the brain’s stability, provoking headaches, problems in natural circadian rhythms as well as insomnia in some folks.
Artificial Sweeteners alter gut bacteria balance aka gut microbiome, which impacts our actual ability to digest and absorb nutrients, metabolize our food and send nutrients from head to toe for optimal function. This is very important to consider for brain health and psychiatry as well.
Let’s jump into some of my favorite alternatives to traditional soda and soft drinks.
Ginger Ale - Raw Ginger, freshly grated, minced thrown into a big mason jar. Add Sparkling water. You can also use organic powdered ginger.
Sprite / 7UP - Freshly Squeezed lemon and lime juice poured into a big glass mason jar. Add sparkling water. You can also blend lemon or lime with purified water and freeze that into ice cubes to use to flavor sparkling water.
Root Beer - Steep in hot water any kind of mixture of dried organic burdock root, sassafras, ginger, dandelion root, licorice as a tea. Let cool in fridge overnight. Add pure vanilla extract and sparkling water.
Red Cream Soda - Drop a handful of organic Frozen Strawberries into a big mason jar. Add Sparkling Water. Add 1-2 tsp of pure vanilla extract.
Coke - This special recipe comes from mixing raw ingredients of Nutmeg, Vanilla, Orange, Clove, and a few others with sparkling water. Feel free to go the same way as the Root Beer recipe above. I like to buy raw organic ingredients and experiment. Pepsi and RC Cola are similar but different to the famous Coke.
Consider going for a “Soda Stream” system if you really fancy soda and need to keep it in your life and you’re looking to find natural solutions. This just adds gas to filtered tap water which you probably already use at home.
Use prepared packaged Organic Teas to give you a foundation of flavor, let them cool, and then add Sparkling Water and vanilla extract. You might consider organic varieties from brands like Traditional Medicinals, Yogi, Pukka, Pique and others. Stay away from plastic tea bags.
Try Coconut Water with added sparkling water
Try cold brew Coffee or Espresso with added sparkling
Now, for the brands who have formulated some healthier alternatives for you that are on the market today. Personally, I’ve only just recently tried a few of these when I was visiting a Nutrition trade show in Florida. I’m usually behind the trends for consumption when it comes to sweet things.
Let me know if you have any experience with any of these. Their sweetness usually comes from natural sweeteners like Stevia or Monkfruit (but I’m not a fan of concentrated sweeteners in general just fyi but they do have their place in helping people transition). You can find these at your local grocer most likely.
Olipop - their cola and root beer flavors are pretty spot on
Zevia - their Mountain Zevia option is a good alternative to Mtn Dew addicts
La Croix - “natural flavors” Many varieties. Mostly fruity.
Spindrift - small amount of fruit juice + sparkling water
Bubly - “natural flavors” Many varieties
Culture Pop - natural herbs and spices, small amount of fruit juice, plus probiotics, pretty interesting
If you wanna kick the can altogether or need someone to help coach you along that journey of rediscovering a healthier relationship with food and drink, how to nourish your body, brain and all of your biology… you know where to find me. Reach out with a comment below and share with a friend who you think would benefit and be interested in reading this very helpful story for today.
- Best and many blessings to you forever and always.
Jonathan
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