Bow to your master, sheeple!
I believe that to be 100% true.
I have worked in the Food and Beverage industry for more than 15 years. I have never seen one item in the entire pantheon of consumables that is worshiped like Diet Coke. Innumerable times I have provided individuals with more than 10 refills of Diet Coke at one meal! And 3-5 refills of Diet Coke per meal is commonplace. I like soft drinks. In particular, Dr. Pepper, Mexican Coca Cola and Barq’s Root Beer. I could not fathom drinking that much pop. But Diet Coke is like liquid crack. If I’m slow on a refill to a Diet Coke drinker, trust me, he/she is going to let me know it. They become pensive and rather agitated. Start sweating. You can see their addiction plainly on their faces. It’s downright scary. You might find this laughable, but I think that Diet Coke might just be the most highly addictive substance in the world. And I know a touch about addiction, being clean and sober from drugs and alcohol for over seven years now. I hate the crap. It smells funny. The head off of a freshly poured diet coke is this weird, dirty brown color. Not a creamy white head like a regular Coke imparts. It tastes like your imbibing something chemical. It’s just gross.
And Diet Coke’s origins, development, testing, and approval are the stuff of high intensity intrigue. Legendary. Worthy of the best spy novels. The controversies abound. Have some fun on the ol’ internets. Do some various Diet Coke searches. Conflicts of interest? Faked research? Massaged research? Suspect research? Political intrigue? Yup! The nightmare stories are abundant too. And the arguments. Brain tumors, holes in the heart, and the alarming increase of childhood diseases (ADHD, Autism) are but just a few of the charges, disputed, of course, leveled at Diet Coke. It goes on and on. It’s hard to make sense of it all. And I’m not going to even begin to try. All I know is that the stuff makes people fiend. And that, however way you wanna slice it, is not a positive! There are actual Aspartame rehab clinics!! I am fo real.
/facepalm
Here are the facts:
1. Drinking Diet Coke in the pursuit of health is an oxymoron. (You’re going to love the “Stay Extraordinary” campaign this Sunday at the Academy Awards telecast!)
2. Donald Rumsfeld (Yes, that Donald Rumsfeld! From 1977 to 1985, Rumsfeld served as Chief Executive Officer, President, and then Chairman of G. D. Searle & Company, a worldwide pharmaceutical company. Searle developed Aspartame.) got Aspartame introduced into the world’s diet. A year after his good friend, and then boss, President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, voila! Diet Coke hits the shelves. This after 15 years of battling over whether or not Aspartame was even safe for human consumption. Fascinating coincidence, eh? By the way, Diet Coke is a Billion dollar brand. And diet soft drinks comprise 4 of the top ten sellers globally. Way to go, Rummy! Man… if I could have just gotten in on the ground floor investment of one of the biggest pharmaceutical breakthroughs in the world! …Oh, yeah! Then I’d be evil, too.
3. It tastes like shit, you sheeple!
Hmmm…I used to enjoy diet coke here and there…especially with the lemon and lime hints of flavor, and if there is nothing else I still order it, but I wouldn’t say I was ever addicted to it…
Still my faves are Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Cherry Pepsi and sugar free energy drinks (all kinds) and while I know ALL those sugar substitutes are bad for me I do find it incredibly difficult to give it up! I’m workin’ on it…
Great blog phat!
Thanks, MJ!
Why do you think you find it incredibly hard to give up?
A lot of the sugar substitute addiction is, in part, based upon the way that sugar substitutes trick the brain. One ingests these sweet things and the mind/body think they are ingesting a sugar, but they’re not, so the mind/body is working to try and process that sugar. Which is not to be found. This sets off a chain reaction that causes the mind/body to crave that sugar, but the person only uses sugar substitutes… so… mass consumption of pharmaceutical sweeteners.
Oh, and mad profits!
I saw a Garfield cartoon in which the legendary Fat Cat said, “Diet is DIE with a T!”
I’m also reminded of a scene from a futuristic novel which name escapes me at this time, in which the protagonist is disabled with an explosion in a Commercial War Zone and an electronic gremlin voice implants a hypnotic compulsion in his brain (mokie coke, mokie coke, mokie mokie mokie coke).
I have no further comment.
(Other than to say buying soft drinks is feeding The Man!!)