I thought I had finally found a healthy drink I liked with no artificial sweetness and they had to go and fuck it up
Stevia is not artificial you silly duck. And it’s more sustainable to grow than the fucking sugar you hypocritically enjoy every day. Get over it.
To clarify I don’t necessarily have an issue with stevia itself it’s the fact that it is usually mixed with erythritol which is bad for you.
Weh, this got heated real quick.
You’re cooked
Do you have any actual data showing that reasonable amounts of erythritol is worse for you than any alternatives?
usually mixed with erythritol
Your photo shows no evidence of this.
is bad for you
I’m fucking done reading shit on the internet where people say things and expect us to believe them at face value. You made this statement, and it isn’t my burden to provide evidence to prove you correct, you will.
Please provide everyone here a link for us to read and change our minds.
Not the guy, but https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9028423/ was an interesting read.
A quick glance on google about Stevia might lead you to this link, but the preview shows “Results showed that stevia might lead to microbial imbalance, disrupting the communication between Gram-negative bacteria in the gut via either the LasR or RhlR …” which seems bad, until you read the rest of the good things that Stevia is supposedly doing.
Plus, the text behind that ellipses is “However, even if stevia inhibits these pathways, it cannot kill off the bacteria.”
So this might just be some good old misinformation on google’s part.
Edit: I mean to say that google is intentionally misleading people about Stevia.
erythritol
Shouldn’t that be on the label if it was in there too? How can you assume it is when it’s not labelled?
IDK what shitty country this is from, but it’s for sure an illegal label here (EU), on at least 2 counts.
Stevia is not artificial you silly duck.
Not to mention that while it’s OP’s money, at least in the US, natural and artificial sweeteners (or flavors) can be chemically-identical. I remember a bit…might have been from NPR Planet Money…on a substance that literally could be obtained either way, but some people thought that artificial flavors were bad, so there was a market for companies to go out and (more-expensively) extract the thing so that they could make the food they made say “natural flavor” rather than “artificial flavor”. The designation is just a function of whether you synthesize or extract the thing, the manufacturing process. It doesn’t say anything about the actual content.
EDIT: Not the article I was thinking of, but same idea:
https://health.wusf.usf.edu/npr-health/2017-11-03/is-natural-flavor-healthier-than-artificial-flavor
All three experts say that ultimately, natural and artificial flavors are not that different. While chemists make natural flavors by extracting chemicals from natural ingredients, artificial flavors are made by creating the same chemicals synthetically.
Platkin says the reason companies bother to use natural flavors rather than artificial flavors is simple: marketing.
“Many of these products have health halos, and that’s what concerns me typically,” says Platkin. Consumers may believe products with natural flavors are healthier, though they’re nutritionally no different from those with artificial flavors.
These are great reads. Thank you for the links!
Also, thank you for paraphrasing one of them, because they helped pique my interest further.
Appreciate you!
Stevia is incredibly misleading as a product
You’re wrong.
What is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
I love how you say this, offer zero explanation as to why and just drop the mic.
I’m not here to defend Stevia, and I could give two shits about it; I’m here because I don’t believe you, unless you please provide us all something to read, because we are done taking things people say at face value.
It is marketed as somehow healthy when the reality is drinking anything with strong sweeteners is problematic. It offers a false sense of security. Instead of actually cutting back on Soda and junk food people switch to the low and zero sugar products.
It is like switching from smoking to vaping. Sure it might be better but the problem still persists.
You can drink a zero sugar saccharine drink every day for the rest of your life and experience no problems from it whatsoever. It’s the most tested artificial sweetener in history and has been used commercially since the 1890s.
People switching to the low and zero sugar products is a good thing. It is much healthier than people drinking sugary beverages - which is the alternative that that they replace. They do not replace water.
Switching from smoking to vaping is an improvement, but not a fair comparison as vaping has been shown to have significant negative health impacts.
i have no issue with stevia other than it tastes fucking awful. just a terrible aftertaste that makes me never want to consume it ever, in any configuration.
deleted by creator
And it isn’t exactly good for you
deleted by creator
It is still sugar and it has a impact. It us also common in soda and over heavily flavored drinks that are hard on your kidneys and heart.
Makes your body think it got sugar but it didn’t
deleted by creator
Stevia isn’t artificial lol
But it tastes artificial and fucks with lots of tummies.
You’re thinking of xylitol which gets mixed with commercial stevia crystals to cut the sweetness
I have yet to find a low calorie sweetener that doesn’t bother my digestive system. My wife, who lives on diet Pepsi, doesn’t believe me.
Liquorice (there’s also an actual root, not just the confectionery) is very sweet and tummy-friendly, actually recognised as a herbal remedy over here for (mild) gastritis because antiinflammatory and antispasmodic (alongside helping with coughs and having some antibacterial properties) but too much will fuck with your blood pressure, avoid it if you have any issues there. A bit will probably be fine but a habit generally isn’t “a bit”.
There’s some medicinal teas over here which pretty much only contain it to taste better (otherwise makes no sense in combination with e.g. valerian). The stuff is actually sweet and pleasant, not a neutral but woody sweetness, not to be confused with North European liquorice confectionery where the predominant flavour is Salammoniac. Which are also very good… hey I grew up with the stuff, don’t look at me like that. Anyhow if you want a naturally sweet herbal tea adding a couple of shavings of the stuff should do the trick.
have you tried honey? Even just a drop or two will really add a lot of sweetness
I have the exact same issue! Haven’t met anyone else with the same problem yet. Really sucks that more and more non-diet drinks are containing some amount of artificial sweetener.
I think anything you’re not used to has the potential to fuck with your tummy
Yeah Stevia tastes like poison to me, super bitter.
Basically all artificial sweeteners taste like either bitter or nothing at all to me. So I’m really angry when I buy a product I’ve been buying for years and it suddenly tastes like a Nintendo Switch cartridge.
>:(
Like the sweet plasticky taste of dasani.
suddenly tastes like a Nintendo Switch cartridge.
Fuck. I know this smell. You just triggered NES and Super Nintendo memories in me. Never played Switch but I’m assuming they’re about the same.
The switch cartridges have a bitterant added to them since they’re small enough to be a choking hazard. It’s not the smell of the construction material they’re talking about.
Ah, so not the scent-memories that were triggered in me then. Different Nintendo scents, makes sense.
I love the smell of electronics! What I’m referencing is indeed the bitter compound they put on Switch cartridges, it tastes really bad and you taste it for a really long time, a stern warning to would-be choking children.
deleted by creator
Have we applied the same scrutiny to HFCS or refined Sugar itself? Or does sugar get a pass because it was the first plant processed for its sweetness?
Are they? These seem to be completely different products to me. One has caffeine and artificial sugar whereas the other has neither. I’d have a hard time believing these are the same products and not just similar ones with confusing names
Those are both their Dead Billionare product and they do both have caffeine. In the old can design it was just listed somewhere else not shown
Anything in a can is not going to be good for us
deleted by creator
Why do you think that?
You can get plain old water in a can.
https://www.amazon.com/Richards-Rainwater-Water-Still-Cans/dp/B09K4V87FM
How about drinking water from the tap? Much cheaper, not wasting cans, and healthy. If you live in a community with bad tap water, write a letter to your local water board, and buy a filtration tank you can put in your fridge.
If you must really have flavor, buy some of the powdered dehydrated lime or orange powder packets.
That’s tea
I presume you’re not from the US.
Many municipalities across the US have poor quality or non drinkable water, and many more do not offer public access to water fountains. Thus, bottled water is a huge market in the US as free facilities are not always available.
I’m Canadian and I legitimately cannot recall the last time I bought bottled or canned water. I bring my two 18.9L jugs to the store to fill them with filtered water for $5 and that’s the extent of my “bottled water” consumption. Elsewhere, I carry a metal water bottle I can get refilled anywhere for free.
Yes, the US is a mirage of a first-world country.
Have drank tap water across the US for decades. Some municipalities are crappier than others, but a fridge filter tank takes care of those places.
Absolutely, I’m not stating that the US’ water is undrinkable, simply that enough municipalities have poor quality or non-drinkable water that it’s easier for companies to market water bottles to people.
Stories like Flint, Mi. go international, and its crisis lasted for a really long time, despite being mostly the exception (see the other commenter’s Wikipedia link). And public access water fountains are not a thing in many cities, leading to an even greater perceived scarcity by consumers.
My point above was that enough municipalities have a drinking water quality problem to drive sales of water bottles across the country, the US’ drinking water is not bad across the world stage, but probably worse than most western European countries.
The solution should be either a water filter, or a filtered water dispenser from a refillable jug. Not disposable water bottles.
I’ve quite literally drank Flint water. Not for a humble brag (far from it) but I really hate that they became some kind of trope. They have needed help for decades and could have recovered faster if America ever cared about people. Good people there. Shitty America management. It’s like they keep them down for the Internet points.
As for municipal water. Stop by Altoona, Iowa sometime and drink their water. It’s just so terrible. Ground water full of stuff they can’t filter at scale. I don’t hate them for it, it’s what they can suck out of the ground, for maybe a few more years before it becomes brine.
It is hard to produce drinking water that is safe, and also tastes good. Is my global point.
Personal filters can improve that. Otherwise, buying water just leads us to a human future that is by far the worst reality we could ever impose upon ourselves.
Edit: TL;DR: bad tasting municipal water isn’t a conspiracy. It’s just the reality you have to work with at the time.
I don’t know where you got that idea, but public tap water is federally regulated in the US (at least for now). Bottled water is popular because of marketing, not because tap water is unsafe.
deleted by creator
How Flint is doing is irrelevant to what I said, the same as me picking on a polluted city in Canada doesn’t change the fact that Canada generally has safe drinking water.
The comment I responded to made it sound like US tap water is mostly not safe to drink. That’s demonstrably untrue. I’m not defending the horrors of industrial capitalism or condoning environmental destruction, I’m merely pointing out that the US does in fact have standards, regulation, and enforcement for drinking water quality. This does not mean it’s perfect, but it does mean that in general you can drink the water out of the tap, like I do every day.
I hate that we live in a world where only extreme viewpoints are allowed. Either the USA is the greatest country in the world or it’s a complete shithole, anything else is just shouted down. I still make the stupid mistake of caring about what’s real rather than what makes a good soundbite on social media.
“Drinking water quality in the United States is generally safe. In 2016, over 90 percent of the nation’s community water systems were in compliance with all published U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) standards. Over 286 million Americans get their tap water from a community water system. Eight percent of the community water systems—large municipal water systems—provide water to 82 percent of the US population.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_water_quality_in_the_United_States
Ahhh this line of logic. Yes, people can forego luxury items and save money while being healthier. You could never eat red meat, or drink soda, or have ice cream, sure, that would be much healthier and cheaper.
“Death to plastic”
“Here drink from this plastic-lined can” (https://www.plasticstoday.com/business/liquid-death-may-murder-your-thirst-but-it-won-t-kill-plastic-no-matter-what-the-ads-say)
Not only that, but unless you can guarantee that a significant portion users will recycle those aluminum cans, they are significantly more energy intensive to manufacture compared to single use plastic bottles.
Do most people not recycle cans?
The overwhelming majority of people recycle nothing.
As well, the overwhelming majority of recycling collection companies recycle nothing.
I almost included “including those supposedly doing the recycling” but I didn’t.
Eh, it entirely depends on the market. If your near mills or ports, a lot of stuff goes to a MRF (materials recover facility).
I have visited one and its pretty labor imtensive and gross. I am guessing most employees are undocumented because I can’t imagine others doing the job for the pay. They basically spend all day picking stuff off a constant feed of garbage. It should be all recyclables, but in a lot of streams there is more trash than recyclables.
If a MRF is near a waste to energy plant, they can get like close to 99% landfill avoidance rates. If not, your essentially making people slave over seperating your recyclables that you could have done (at least before the entire country went single stream)
I had to teach my parents how to recycle.
Here in Cleveland, we used to just put all trash, no recycling, on the lawn. Then in 2008 or so, they put out a recycling innitive. Each resident had to pay $10 per family (so duplexs would buy 2 per house), and they’d get a blue bin. You put the recycling in the blue bin, and a seperate truck picks that up.
Sounds great right?
Welll…in 2020 or so they found out the 1st truck would take your black bin regular trash, and the 2nd truck would take your blue bin recyclables, and then BOTH trucks would drop off in the same pile, in the same landfill with zero recycling done.
Since that was discovered I see a massive 90%+ dropoff in blue bins. Not only have people lost faith in buying blue bins at all, but most people now use their blue bins as 2nd regular non-recycling trash can.
It’s true, I have no idea what actually happens to my recycling after it’s picked up, but I guess I can hope…
It’s easier if you don’t hope. Less inevitable disappointment that way.
and then BOTH trucks would drop off in the same pile, in the same landfill with zero recycling done.
That’s not true, especially for cans. It’s more effective to sort trash at a central location than to have consumers do it beforehand. Aluminum recycling alone turns a significant profit. Glass is also profitable by itself.
Waste management companies should be paying you for your cans; if they are charging you for recycling, you should consider taking your cans to a scrap yard rather than leaving them in your trash.
I think you’re misunderstanding.
I’m not stating how recycling SHOULD work. I’m stating how the city of Cleveland DID (or rather did NOT) operate it’s own recycling innitive.
They sold you a blue bin for $10. And then for 12 years, unknown to the public, they picked up the recycleables, and didn’t recycle them.
It was a cash grab to get millions of dollars from residents, to perform a service that was never properly performed.
Bro. Citation needed.
My city started doing a similar thing. Their contracted recycling plants started rejecting the truck loads because they were seeing less than 40% recyclable content in the trucks. Lots of people overestimate how much of their trash is recyclable, and over-utilize the recycling bin.
Apparently the recycling plants will accept as low as 50% recyclable content in the load, anything under that for a prolonged period, they start rejecting the loads.
So for a year our city was just taking the recycling bin loads to the landfill. Years ago most cities could just sell it directly to China, ship it over on enormous garbage boats, but even China has stopped accepting our nonsense.
Our city had to do a big re-education campaign, and send out new stickers for the bin lids, to get residents to put only recyclable things in the recycle bins.
Where I live, every time you buy a plastic bottle, aluminum can or glass bottle, you pay extra 10 cents that you get back when you take them to the recycling (that every store is mandated to have, IIRC).
And do you do that?
I’m lazy enough and a frequent enough soft drink & beer consumer that by the time I take it in, it’s at least 10€, but can be 20€ or more. I have also gotten over 100€ but that was cheating, it was from previous year’s summer solstice celebrations. And like the commenter above you, it’s the same price for me, 10 cents a bottle or can. Mostly because we apparently live in the same country.
Don’t know about other places with a deposit system, but in Finland 98% of aluminium cans are recycled. Seems to work pretty well
Yes? Because every time we bring back a bag of bottles, we get about 10€. Would you rather throw out the 10€?
I also return mine but most people around me don’t seem to. You can often find them littering the streets or walkways or even out in the woods unfortunately.
Here in California we have high deposits and I never see cans left unattended for long. $0.05 is nothing in this economy.
According to the actual Aluminum Association, only 43% of aluminum cans shipped within the United States are recycled.
Drink water
How?
No.
Your loss
Ultimately it is your call what you put in your body. Just don’t start complaining about health issues.
I drink almost a gallon a day of water. I just don’t like being told what to do.
The unsweetened tea fight is a losing battle. The only way to get it is to make it yourself.
Why would anyone want to buy unsweetened tea? Its literally less work making your own than carrying the cans from the store. And costs like 1/100
When I’m out and about and looking for a drink on a hot day I’d love if regular unsweet tea was widely available. I hate buying bottled water but I also hate sweet drinks.
Just bring tea concentrate. There are several different versions of them from paste to powder to just a tea bag and then you just need water.
Cold brew is even a thing. Tea is like the easiest thing you can make especially if you want it unsweetened.
My problem is I always want lemonade and life has apparently run out of free lemons raining from the sky for me to use and I’m not bringing simple syrup anymore.
This isn’t unsweetened tea either. It’s probably very sweet considering how high in the order agave syrup is
What about tejava (spelling?)
My fiance loves liquid death because it didn’t have anything for sweetness aside from the agave. Now all he’s gonna taste is the stevia. :(
The only benefit this company offers with their beverages is the non-alcoholic-but-not-NA-beer tall-boy. My recovering alcoholic friend brings these to parties if he knows people will be drinking and just hold one and I’ve watched him go sober through so many situations where he’d probably have had a drink before. Not that these are the only options for that, though, obviously.
Sips from a can of tonic
Am i doin it rite
I think that’s up to you. Does it work for you? Then yes! 😃
So, having a pre-chilled and conveniently-available product can be nice when you’re away from home, but if this is for at home, have you ever considered just, you know, making a pitcher of your own drink with whatever you want? Maybe take a Thermos of the stuff chilled or iced if you’re on the go? I mean, if you want agave as your sweetener, then you can make a drink with just agave and then tweak it to however you want. Food-grade citric acid is a preservative – I have a bottle in the pantry. You can purchase all sorts of flavors.
Like, if you buy a premade good, then you can benefit from the R&D done by the company, but if you have extremely exacting demands that you feel no company is making, you can rage about it or just make what you want. In general, drinks have an enormous markup – I mean, you’re mostly buying water with a little flavoring and coloring – so you can have exactly what you want and it’ll probably be cheaper, too.
I take my own unsweet tea to work in a thermos. If that runs out, I drink the bottled water they provide.
These are the same people that bitch about the plastic waste in Keurig pods.
Flavored Liquid Death tastes like absolute ass to begin with. It’s like unsweetened/lightly sweetened drinks targeted at Monster drinkers
Why do all the 0 calorie sweeteners have to taste like a dead hobo’s arse?
They don’t
Have you tried dead hobo’s arse?
Can’t say I have, how about you?
Haven’t had the pleasure
The products containing them definitely taste weirder though.
Pepsi Max is about the only one that I think tastes decent. Fanta zero? Weird. Coca Cola Zero? Weird. Sprite Zero? Does nothing for me. Sugar free red bull? Ew.
Monster’s white Ultra flavour, whatever it’s called, is semi-ok. Watermelon Ultra is OK. But neither is as good as say, Aussie Lemonade, which has sugar in it.
Of course, I’m Estonian, so the baseline here is regular sugar, not HFCS. I love Fanta, but American Fanta was disgusting.
It really is a spectrum, you’re right - some products definitely taste worse than others.
Pepsi Max tends to taste better because it uses a combination of Acesulfame Potassium (Ace-K) and aspartame (ie. Equal), whereas Coke/Fanta tends to just use aspartame.
I personally find erythritol to be the most neutral flavour-wise, and without that laxative effect in the event of over-consumption.
Stevia definitely has a herbal after-taste that not everyone finds pleasant, but it can/does have its place at times.
Maltitol on the other hand, is the tool of the devil - and I would only wish it upon my worst enemies.
Taste is subjective. I stopped drinking sugar soda several years ago because i’m pre-diabetic and don’t want diabetes. Sugar soda tastes weird to me now because I only drink diet soda.
You’re certainly better off for it, congratulations!
I unfortunately still get the sugar cravings. Not often, usually it’s when I’m tired. But they exist. If I buy a cold 0.5L bottle of my favorite non-caffeinated sugary soft drink, that’s damn near 50 grams of extra sugar in me, but man does it refresh me on a walk.
There was a time when I did OMAD, which really stabilizes your blood sugar. At that time, I did not experience such cravings. I miss being near immune to sugar cravings lol
This entire thread had been really disheartening
