There I have said it, I have an addiction to Coke Light!
I used to drink plain ole Coke, attempted to like Cherry Coke (Ugh. What was I thinking!), then sidled towards the other flavour permutations Coke came up with such as Black Cherry, Zero ( with absolutely no nutritional value, yayy!), Lime, Lemon et al. I then migrated on to Coke Light.
And what a relationship I have with it. I really really love this stuff. I drink it early in the day for Brekky, I drink it while at work, with loads of ice and lime juice, I drink it at night before going to bed and all other times in between or when the mood strikes.
My personal favourite was when Coca Cola Malaysia used to offer Coke Light Lemon. I would buy it by the cartons! Alas, this flavour was discontinued, probably due to the low sales figures, or the fact that it smelled faintly of some cheap toilet cleaning bleach, least-ways that was what they were saying.
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| Joy! |
In my duty travels abroad, my drink of choice would invariably be some unique Coke Light or Diet flavours.
At one point, I was downing like 9 cans in a day! Rather strangely I have never experienced the discomforts others were saying when one has too much soda drinks. Nowadays, it is a more modest 4 to 5 cans a day (which isn't modest at all some would argue).
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| With Vitamins! Healthier alternative even! |
The thing is, I don't enjoy it so much for the so called dieting reasons (for which plain ole water works wonders to assist in flushing the bodily systems, which I do have lots of between hits of coke light), but rather for the immediate sweet hit it gives. The primary sweetening agent in Coke Light is Aspartame and this bonded amino acid based sugar substitute is seriously sweeter pound for pound when compared to boring, plain sugar.
Then I stumbled upon these Internet articles, bandying the dangers of Aspartame and other synthetic sweeteners- http://www.sweetpoison.com/aspartame-information.html, http://www.mercola.com/article/aspartame/hidden_dangers.html. Egads! Now what?
So what can I try for that immediate sweet impact I so crave? Honey is too cloying and its own flavours doesn't agree with some others, Demerara doesn't keep very well and cost twice that of Honey, White sugar attracts ants, Palm sugar is just, well, not my cup of tea. Sigh....
