Diet Coke

Woah - is that a Mentos in your bottle, or are you just happy to see me?

If there’s one thing I hate (and believe me, I hate way more than just one thing), it’s people telling me how to live my life. The guy in my group at Red Robin who, after I order my burger cooked medium, says, “You know, Truman, meat cooked medium rare has a higher percentage of potentially deadly bacteria than meat cooked well done.” The girl in my 9th grade algebra class who, when I decline her offer to attend her hyperconservative Christian youth group, says, “So you’re not open to new opinions?” The cop who says, “Sir, this is a one way street.”

I would understand if I was some sort of heroin addict neo-Nazi – sure, it’s still nobody’s business, but that’s a sort of personality that is legitimately in need of some outside direction with regard to behavior and moderation. But I feel like I’m an overall decent, law abiding sort of guy – I hold the door open for women, I abstain from addictive substances like World of Warcraft, and so far in college I’ve only publicly urinated once.* Yet in spite of this, people continue to preach their own particular gospel to me, rooted in some combination of mild concern and strong douchebaggery.

*I can’t help the fact that Matt Takimoto only had two bathrooms, both of which were full of crying, vomiting girls, and that the side of his house was concealed from street view and basically begging to be peed on. Incidentally, internship people, I was a sober designated driver that night – behold the extent of my law abiding goodness!

Public Enemy #1 of Truman’s Habits was my Diet Coke consumption. I picked up the habit about ten years ago in order to cope with the pressures of 5th grade, and it continued all the way through college. Really, diet soda is a pretty embarrassing habit to have, because it’s the preferred beverage of soccer moms and supermodels worldwide. It’s like being an alcoholic, but only for Zima and rosé wine. Or being a chain smoker who only smokes Virginia Slims. Or a compulsive tampon-purchaser. The list goes on.

My consumption was never great – usually one can a day, more than that if I wound up going out to dinner that night. This was really a miniscule amount compared to most Diet Coke aficionados I know, who tend to make up for the drink’s overall pussiness by putting away enough to fill an aquarium every day. However, merely requesting a Diet Coke at a restaurant was enough to send whoever I was with into a conniption fit.

“Diet soda actually makes you fatter than regular cola!”
“Diet Coke is sweetened with aspartame, and that causes cancer!”
“The Coca Cola Company secretly wants to blow up the Moon!”

In order:

1) I don’t drink Diet Coke because I want to stay thin, I drink it because I like the taste.
2) Every major medical body in America begs to differ, so- Oh, wait, you read that in a chain email? Nevermind. I’m sure your Aunt Connie wouldn’t forward that tidbit along unless it passed her rigorous standard of peer review.
3) Good riddance. I hate the Moon. Who says we need tides?

Nothing I said, though, would ever dissuade my critics, all of whom were convinced that the most widely consumed diet soda on Earth was poison in a can, despite the fact that the steady rise of world population was refuting their claims, one healthy Diet Coke drinker at a time.

The Ex Girlfriend was one of the strongest opponents of my Diet Coke habit – not out of concern, but rather because criticizing every aspect of my character was and still is her favorite thing (next to not eating). She argued that I was remaining purposefully ignorant by only reading scientific studies conducted by medical professionals and organizations and not considering studies by naturopaths and eastern medicine professionals. Her argument seemed to be – and I’m not exaggerating here – that the Coca Cola Company had bribed every single member of every accredited medical organization, public and private, in the world in order to make them roundly declare aspartame safe for human consumption and destroy the evidence that it was in fact indirectly responsible for 9/11.

I’ve gone to the trouble of dressing down all my old critics because I want them to know that while I’ve almost entirely quit drinking Diet Coke (or any soft drink, for that matter) over the past three months, their constant nagging had nothing to do with it.

The primary reason was cost. In Europe, everything is more expensive (a natural byproduct of their diminished freedom), particularly in England, where the strong pound makes every purchase from an American bank account sting just a little bit more. Thus, at mealtimes, your 7 pound ($10.50) sandwich was expensive enough without adding a 2.50 pound ($3.75) Diet Coke to the tab. Tap water, on the other hand, was free (so long as you were very specific about requesting tap water, because if you weren’t careful you could wind up with a bottle of mineral water, the primary mineral in which must’ve been gold, given the cost). A pint of cider would add to the cost of the meal, but it also tended to do one hell of a lot more for me than a Diet Coke.

And what I noticed after about a week off the stuff is that I really don’t miss it that much. My relationship to Diet Coke wasn’t an addiction, as a fair number of nosy onlookers claimed it was, but just a habit – I was used to having a can of Coke every day, and was under the impression that carbonated water and syrup were as necessary a part of my daily life as breathing or complaining about Lady Gaga.

Now I’ve been away so long that it’s not even all that appetizing to me anymore. On the plane from England to America I had a couple of Diet Cokes, along with a Dr. Pepper in the Minneapolis airport, in order to give myself enough of a sugar and caffeine boost to stave off jet lag until bedtime in Oregon. While the drinks kept me awake, they also made my unaccustomed body feel pretty sick. So really, why go back?

So, for the record, I’m off soft drinks, and it really wasn’t that hard of a shift to make. I’ve had more energy and it’s done wonders for my bowel movements. I’ll still drink Diet Coke when I’m mixing drinks at parties (where I drink responsibly and legally, as I am 21 years old, internship people), and I’ll hit up whatever all natural cane sugar flavored cola I find at a hippie market in Portland, but for all other intents and purposes I’m hitting the water pretty hard and loving every minute of it.

Of course, I still eat red meat, so all you would be advice givers can just feel free to jump up my butt about that one.

Truman Capps hopes to balance out the healthiness of his beverage selection with an increase in bacon consumption.