If you are going to be drinking 6 cans of soda a day, then diet soda is going to be better for you based on all available evidence today. By a large margin.
Drinking zero cans of soda is quite obviously better than either of those options.
Those who tend to indulge in large amounts of these substances typically have other unhealthy eating (and other) habits so good luck figuring out causation here.
I lost 100lbs coming from close to morbid obesity. Diet soda is the single vice I refuse to give up for mental health reasons. Of all the vices (eating, drinking, substances, etc.) I had before, this seems like the least concerning. Some people don't need that mental blowoff valve, but if I'm going to maintain the rest of my healthy habits I've found I require such a thing.
It is easy to get off soda once you get off it already and drink water. As when you do eventually get back to it and go "Maybe I'll have a coke" what you will find will be severely disappointing. Mouthfeel is terrible. Every sip you try and get that taste in your imagination of what you think is coke but you end up just tasting fructose concoction and carbonation. Makes you feel dehydrated after, like you have to chug a pint of water just to make your saliva not so viscous. The only sugary drink I tolerate now is lemonade I make myself. And I'm drinking it partially for carb load.
So really, get off the soda. It isn't even a great mental reward. Have a piece of chocolate instead. There are gut health benefits with chocolate.
I was off it for 6mo or so while I lost the weight. It wasn’t especially hard to stop, but water is in no way a replacement for it in any way.
It’s the thing I prefer. Don’t like chocolate or really other sweet things in general. Even full sugar soda is far too sugary for me, outside of some niche drinks out of Europe.
The available scientific evidence on fake sugars tends to skew towards “fairly safe, but not entirely so” until you get into observational studies as mentioned in the article. The few everyone loves to continually cite that show otherwise are using mouse or rat models with some absurd 10x safe daily ingestion rates to show what amounts to rather mild impacts.
There really is nothing like an ice cold Diet Coke for me after working hard in the back yard in the summer heat. Or something to sip on during horrible corporate meetings.
I’ve also wore a glucose monitor for fun, and it in no way impacts blood sugar levels - one of the leading bro science hot takes. I definitely can see how it can be involved in habits though and trigger mental signals to overindulge in other substances during and after consumption. Having one certainly begets the impulse to have another I need to watch out for.
I did pick up a (black) coffee habit to reduce consumption a bit, but I’m not convinced that’s any healthier.
If you think an ice cold diet coke is nice, wait till you try ice cold water after working hard. Ambrosia. Clean on the teeth feeling too. Happy chemicals firing off in your head. Besides, what you really need are carbs at this point for recovery. This is why people riding bikes 100 miles are eating straight up honey packets. Or filling a spare water bottle with sugar water, like actual home mix table sugar and water. Carbs are your actual fuel for that sort of thing. But again you have to match the carb load to the effort or risk calories in/out imbalance and weight gain. No issue for cyclists of course on that front.
Dealing with boredom with a shot of anything probably isn't a healthy coping mechanism if we are being honest. Better to train to have the resolve to steel over this sort of thing than to form some Pavlovian dependency.
If you are going to be drinking 6 cans of soda a day, then diet soda is going to be better for you based on all available evidence today. By a large margin.
Drinking zero cans of soda is quite obviously better than either of those options.
Those who tend to indulge in large amounts of these substances typically have other unhealthy eating (and other) habits so good luck figuring out causation here.
I lost 100lbs coming from close to morbid obesity. Diet soda is the single vice I refuse to give up for mental health reasons. Of all the vices (eating, drinking, substances, etc.) I had before, this seems like the least concerning. Some people don't need that mental blowoff valve, but if I'm going to maintain the rest of my healthy habits I've found I require such a thing.