Farewell my toxic love, it’s been (artificially) sweet

I have decided to cut a toxic friend out of my life. I love them dearly, but I can’t keep ignoring how bad they are for me. And now that I’ve bid them farewell, I crave their crisp, carbonated sweetness every single day.

Oh, Coke Zero, how desperately I miss you.

Last week, the World Health Organisation named aspartame – one of the key ingredients of Coke Zero and Diet Coke – as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. I had heard rumblings of this before, but I had drowned them out with the snap of a ring-pull and the satisfying hiss of gas leaving a can. Sure, I’d think, aspartame is a chemical, but everything is a chemical. Water is a chemical! We all have our vices, and mine is relatively minor, and it is just so fantastically refreshing.

Still, the WHO findings are hard to ignore. So is the French study of 2022 that concluded that consuming large amounts of artificial sweeteners increases the risk of some cancers and of stroke, and the Italian study of 2020 that linked the consumption of aspartame to cancers in mice.

Of course, a single can of soft drink is unlikely to cause cancer in a mouse, let alone a human. But if I consider all the Coke Zero and Diet Coke I’ve consumed in my lifetime, I’d have enough carcinogens to knock out a family of rodents, and possibly a couple of small dogs.

I began drinking Diet Coke back in the 80s, when anything “sugar-free” was practically health food. Yes, it was saccharine-y, but it was infinitely preferable to the other diet cola on the market, the hideously bitter Tab. In 2005, when Coke Zero came along, I embraced it immediately. Unlike Diet Coke, Coke Zero tasted almost exactly like original Coke, but without the furriness of sugar on my teeth.

I had enjoyed Diet Coke. I passionately loved Coke Zero.

I’ve bought a Coke Zero every time I’ve stepped into a supermarket. I’ve taken a Coke Zero into every cinema I’ve visited. I’ve ordered mini cans of Coke Zero on every aeroplane journey. I craved a Coke Zero immediately after giving birth, and gulped grateful cans of it above my newborn baby’s head.

When you’re a Coke Zero aficionado, you notice tiny differences in the iterations. The tiny cans hold the most consistent fizz. The Coke in the big bottles feels softer on the tongue. The Coke from the soda fountains is flatter and syrupy. Diet Coke, acceptable at a pinch, has a sharper, more synthetic taste.