Why I Stopped Drinking Diet Coke

Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa
1 min readSep 14, 2023

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For more than a year, I have stopped consuming diet soda. My go to drink was Diet Coke, and it was not uncommon for me to consume almost a 12 pack a day. I enjoyed the taste, it did not have any sugar, and it was a substitute for food, allowing me to decrease my daily caloric intake.

I won’t lie: I do miss it. In a lot of parties to which I go, and restaurants in which I’m dining, there are not many alternatives to diet soda other than water (or perhaps iced tea). Still, I remain steadfast in my abstinence from diet soda

This is not because of the recent World Health Organization classification of aspartame, a ubiquitous nonnutritive sweetener (and the one used in Diet Coke) as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” I was never worried about getting cancer from an artificial sweetener.

Read the rest of the story at https://healthcaremusings.substack.com/p/why-i-stopped-drinking-diet-coke

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Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa
Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa

Written by Dr. Hesham A. Hassaballa

NY Times featured Pulmonary and Critical Care Specialist | Physician Leader | Author and Blogger | His latest book is “Code Blue,” a medical thriller.