*The Deception of Diet*

I enjoy the occasional soda. Most of the time, if I decide to drink soda I go with the diet. Why? Like most people who indulge in diet coke, we believe that diet is better, even healthier. We believe that if we drink a soda, we should go for the diet because it has no calories. Honestly, why blow our daily calorie intake on soda when we can be stinting our calories on food instead!

A couple days ago in class, we were to sample a small cup of diet coke along with ramen. We were told to savor the flavors and describe it. Along with that activity, Ann told us a story of how her husband's teeth ended up dissolving due to his addiction to diet coke. After class, since I also drink diet soda, I did a little research on it. The results were not surprising to me, I've known already that diet soda is not great, that it's not healthy. Due to the use of aspartame in diet sodas, it is believed that because they are so much sweeter than actual sugar, drinking much of it will abuse the systems in your body and might actually desensitize your body to sugar-like substances and can make you gain more weight, which is not the result most people are looking for when they drink diet.

Now that I am in college, I now have even easier access to soda, regular or diet. However, now that I am in college, I know that I should be mindful of my diet and that I should avoid drinking all kinds of soda. The class activity gave me motivation to research diet coke, now I know how bad it really is. While I will still indulge in the occasional diet, I will try to drink more water or even juice.