Like, the nutrition facts table says it contains nothing other than some sodium. No sugars or fats or calories at all
Yet it clearly is edible, so what is it? Some concoction made mostly from indigestible minerals?
water, acids for the sour taste, coloring, caffeine and sweetener that is more effective than sugar and just activates the sweet taste buds, but has no significant nutritiinal value.
you also forgot the coke-leaves extracts. (“natural flavors”)
How is this the top comment… Sodas are flavor extracts at their core. The amount of other things are just there to balance or optimize those core flavors. Sweet, salty, acidic, viscosity, color, fizz… All choices on top of the flavor extracts. Diet soda just substitutes sugar for low calorie sweeteners.
they add a little nuance, but their quantity is not relevant for nutritional value, which is what OP asked about
For which the original answer is insufficient, but I guess my clarification wasn’t eli5. The flavoring extracts do contribute calories but they are too low to be reportable by federal standards and many artificial sweeteners also have calories but are also too low to report.
Aspartame has about the same amount of calories as sugar (4kcal per gram). But it’s much more sweet so you need very little of it. So there is a very tiny amount of sweetener which does contain calories but it’s rounded down to 0.
The difference is also big enough that cans of diet coke float and regular sink.
You son of a bitch…now I gotta buy a can of diet coke, and a can of coke.
I don’t even LIKE diet coke! But I gotta know if you’re full of shit…
Well, this will be my next party trick somehow.
If memory serves a 12oz can is just a little under 1/2 calorie.
If tens of thousands of commercials I heard in the 80s were right…
“Less than a calorie, Diet Coke!”
Just for the taste of it!
egg white is 90% water. it doesn’t take much to drastically alter water
The person that typed this comment is about 60% water.
Extreme dehydration, kindly drink 10% more water
You ugly bag of mostly water…
https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/769164/nutrients
INGREDIENTS: CARBONATED WATER, CARAMEL COLOR, ASPARTAME, PHOSPHORIC ACID, POTASSIUM BENZOATE (TO PROTECT TASTE), NATURAL FLAVORS, CITRIC ACID, CAFFEINE.
In Australia they give (from largest to smallest):
Ingredients
- Carbonated Water
- Colour (150d)
- Food Acids (338, 330)
- Sweeteners (951, 950)
- Flavour
- Caffeine
With the numbers corresponding to:
- 150d - soft-drink caramel
- 338 - phosphoric acid
- 330 - citric acid
- 951 - Aspartame
- 950 - Acesulfame potassium
I believe its mostly soda water and caramel coloring (no duh)
The sweetness is from aspartame, a very common artificial zero-calorie sweetener.
Aside from that it’s gonna be a (trade secret, they’ll never tell us) mixture of artificial and natural flavorings. All virtually zero calorie, and probably in very small amounts.
The nutrition panel only captures a subset of important bioavailable nutrients.
For example, water is obviously a digestible nutrient, but is not represented there on.
Exactly, the nutrition label isn’t a list of all substances found by chemical analysis, it’s literally just the most important “nutrition” information
what is in it is listed in the ingredients list.
What??
It’s a rough read, but it checks out. Completely coherent.
Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like?
It’s a cola with an artificial sweetener. There’s lots of misinformation out there about diet soda. It mostly passes through you, unlike regular soda which has lots of sugar that your body stores as fat. Not to say either one is healthy because it most certainly is not. However, phosphoric acid in cola (both regular and diet) can lead to an increased risk of kidney stones. In case anyone is wondering I do not work for big soda, I’ve just read way too much about this topic. That being said please drink more water. Unsweetened tea or black coffee is also acceptable. Anything is fine in moderation. Soda is supposed to be a treat enjoyed once in a while, now it’s a mass market product that is way too accessible. And no diet soda does not cause cancer, please stop citing a garbage study that has been disproven every subsequent trial.
I wasn’t even under the illusion that it would be good for me, lol.
Even IF Diet Coke is a sometimes drink for me, that ‘sometimes’ means ‘once every saturday’ – It’ll probably give me diabetes long-term but y’know. Some people ruin their livers with alcohol, some people fuck their lungs with cigs, I’m screwing up my pancreas with diet soda. 🤷
Ok so cite the study thats not bought from the big drink factories that proves you don’t get cancer from diet soda. Let’s see your proof.
It’s all about how they sweeten the drink. Regular coke uses corn syrup while diet coke uses aspartame. This allows the diet coke to have no calories.
Yeah but Coke isn’t JUST sweeteners (it’s real sugar over here u-u) and water. At least according to the ingredients list, there’s like, the extract of a weird nut (the Cola nut!), you’d think that would have some sugars and ~organic bits~ (proteins? Idk) of its own
Kinda like how juices with “no added sugar” still have some calories, idk
It’s so little per serving they’re permitted to not list it.
It’s like 0 calories - they’re permitted to say that when it’s below a certain level, per serving that (I think) it’s in the error range of measurement.
I seem to recall that if the total calories are below a certain point they’re still allowed to call it “zero calorie”. Diet Coke is mostly water which has no calories and all the other ingredients probably amount to like 2 or 3 calories total. Since that’s considered a negligible amount they just list it as zero
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Kinda like how juices with “no added sugar” still have some calories
That’s because fruits naturally have sugar in them.
Yes there are more differences and there’s likely different recipes based on where you live. But the main one, from my understanding, is what I said in my original comment.
I think of it as a flavored seltzer.
Aspartame is the sweet flavor and unspecified “natural flavors” do the rest.
I don’t drink it often anymore, but it’s great for a no calorie treat. No it won’t give you diabetes but you shouldn’t drink it instead of water. It isn’t water.
As I understand diet coke uses sucralose, not aspartame as sweetener.
Sucralose has a different sweetness profile, much closer to real sugar and is not bitter. Compared to aspartame in zero/light that needs 0.2g salt/liter to cover up the bitterness.
This is not correct.
Diet Coke definitely still uses aspartame and not sucralose.
Okay not all Diet Coke uses sucralose, but you can still buy Diet Coke with Splenda https://www.cokesolutions.com/products/brands/diet-coke/diet-coke-with-splenda.html
I would advise avoiding things with sucralose.
I see that the study uses 48mg sucralose in 60ml water amounting to 0.8g/liter.
My Cola recipe with pure sucralose uses 0.167g/liter this should be equivalent to normal soda sweetness of 100g sugar/liter.
The issue I had with sucralose was that it seemed to go out of solution in the syrup that’s why my current Cola recipe uses a mix of sucralose/saccharin/stevia in the ratio of 30/30/40 which amounts to 0.05g sucralose/liter so if I drink 1 liter of soda I’ll get the same amount as their study.
The reason I continue to use sucralose is that it rounds out the flavor of saccharin and stevia.
So, what you meant to say was that there also exists a version of diet coke with sucralose instead of aspartame?
For that, look at the ingredients list, not the “nutrition facts”.
It’s mostly molasses and baby shite.