Need help finding a good alternative to diet pop

[Heavy B]

Hey, all...
Well, I'm finally going to try and make some serious changes to my diet. Everything I've heard/read has indicated that cutting out pop, even diet pop, will help with weight loss and feeling healthy.

Diet Coke is my nectar!! So, if I'm going to give it up, I need something to replace it. Something healthy, low-calorie and with taste.

I've tried researching this on-line, but as usual, I keep getting mixed messages about what "flavored, diet water" is good.

So, I figured I'd turn to my trusted Snopes Family for advice!

What has worked for ya'll? Anybody else given up pop? What did you use as a substitute? Did it work? (BTW, I know that if I REALLY want to be sure, I should just switch to plain, 'ol water. But, I'm afraid that if I go that route, my tastebuds are going to start screaming for flavor and I'll be too tempted to go back to Diet Coke.)

Anyway, thanks in advance for your advice!!

[Amigone201]

I like seltzer, myself. Yeah, it in no way compares to soda, but after a few weeks, you'll get used to it.

[Ryda Wong, EBfCo.]

What about teas? You can mix up a pitcher of sweetened, iced tea in no time. It's tasty and far healthier than sodas. I love a nice black tea with a few bags of mint and some honey. I've also used some fruit teas like peach.

You can also ice tisanes (the herbal blends with no actual tea leaves in them), and many of those are quite lovely, especially those with fruits.

I, myself, am a water addict, and rarely drink soadas (except as mixers in liquor.....we all have our downfalls, eh?), but even I love having tea around.

[ElectricBarbarella]

It IS the seltzer (the fizz) we get addicted to. Anyway, I helped myself get rid of my mountain dew addiction by purchasing this stuff that you can get at Winn Dixie or walmart:

Prestige Brand Flavored Water (it actually tastes like soda, but is bottled water and they have regular and diet brands)

And Sam's Choice Clear American and it tastes just like soda as well. I actually prefer this brand over the Presitge.

The diet version is calorie free. And tastes excellent cold.

[llewtrah]

I drink flavoured waters, but I try to avoid any that have potassium sorbate (preservative) as this causes my intestines to gripe.

I second cold herbal teas, but if you have to sweeten them there is no real improvement in terms of diet.

I also have a juicer and I dilute the fruit juices with water or use them to make flavoured water.

[Ariadne]

I am a Diet Mountain Dew addict, but have found sparkling water (such as San Pelligrino or Perrier) to be a nice substitute. Target has a good store-brand sparkling water, and it comes in natural flavors, too. It took me forever to like carbonated water, but after a few trips to Europe I fell in love with it and regret that it is much more difficult to find, and expensive, in the US. It satisfies that desire for carbonation but tastes less sweet, so I don't drink it so quickly, and it doesn't have any strange-sounding chemicals in the ingredients. Even the flavored Perrier just has natural flavors with no sweeteners.

The major problem is the lack of caffeine, which has made my attempts to give up the Dew futile. For some reason coffee and unsweetened iced tea just make me feel hungry, and give me a stomachache if I haven't eaten in a while, so those don't really help me, but iced tea might be a solution for you.

Good luck, and I hope you have more willpower than I do!

[ElectricBarbarella]

**Warning: I am about to set off Ryda's "Southern" thang here (and anyone else who might be "southern")

I DO NOT LIKE SWEET TEA. It does nothing taste wise for me (as Llwetrah said, if you have to sweeten it, that defeats the diet purpose) and I actually think it and the unsweetened version taste nasty.

Here's the offensive part (grin): I MUCH prefer the taste of those powdered teas--like Lipton and 4C. (runs quickly)


(out of breath)
Okay, here's why--they come in diet, caffeine free, and no preservative options. Case in point is one tea I really like: 4C's brand of White Tea Antioxidant Blueberry.

70 calories, ZERO sodium, only 18g's of sugar. Ingredients are: sugar, instant white tea, citric acid, gum Arabic, natural and artificial blueberry flavor.

That's it. Their diet version (which I have been unable to find) is even better. And it tastes GOOD.

(runs away again)

[Horse Chestnut]

I pretty much always drink water or unsweet tea now, but when I was younger and it was easier to keep the weight off I used to make my own sodas out of club soda and fruit juices. You can make the mixtures as light or as sweet as you want and it was very refreshing. Even my young neighbors, who were pretty much raised on Kool-Aid and soda pop, thought it was delish and would ask me to make my "home-made pop" when they came over. Pour it over ice or in a frosted glass and it's thirst-quenching heaven!

The nice thing about the club soda is that can buy it in individual servings, so you don't have to worry about it sitting in the fridge losing its fizz.

[CSGirl]

Originally Posted by ElectricBarbarella

And Sam's Choice Clear American and it tastes just like soda as well. I actually prefer this brand over the Presitge.

I love this stuff, as well. Plus there are a lot of flavors to choose from.

[Menolly]

Heavy B, we're trying to wean ourselves from soda here too. DS and DH now like drinking filtered tap water with Kroger brand Active Lifestyle mix. It's a fruit flavored mix in a stick packet, very portable. It adds 16 vitamins and minerals. They like the black cherry and grape mixes. I need caffeine so I'm using Special K Protein Water Mix--it has iced tea, protein and B vitamins in the stick packet. All these mixes are sweetened with sucralose.

[Christie]

Another vote for iced tea here. A few years ago I had a really bad flu and one of the side effects, for some reason, was that I took an aversion to carbonated drinks that I've never (so far) been able to shake. Not drinking pop can be a pain when you're in restaurants as unless you stick with water, beverages like juices can be pricey and full of calories as well. Anyway I make my own iced tea at home - just make a pot of tea with double the number of tea bags I'd normally use - let it steep for quite awhile and then pour over ice.

[Morgaine]

There's a brand of tea called 'Red Diamond' that I highly recommend. They have a regular, sweetened, sweetened with Splenda & unsweetened. I do NOT recommend the unsweetened as IMO it tastes like melting plastic smells. The sweetened with Splenda OTOH is great IMO. If you're looking for the individual packets I personally prefer the Benefiber Raspberry Tea. It tastes great.
I had to give up fizzy drinks a few years ago & tea has become my new favorite beverage.

[Lainie]

I've started drinking iced tea at work to cut down on pop consumption and save money (my employer provides tea and coffee). I brew the tea very strong, then fill the cup with ice (we also have an ice dispenser in the cafeteria). I like green tea with honey, lemon and ginseng -- Celestial Seasonings makes it, and there's also a Kroger President's Choice private label version that's quite good.

[Insensible Crier]

Originally Posted by ElectricBarbarella

**Warning: I am about to set off Ryda's "Southern" thang here (and anyone else who might be "southern")

I DO NOT LIKE SWEET TEA. It does nothing taste wise for me (as Llwetrah said, if you have to sweeten it, that defeats the diet purpose) and I actually think it and the unsweetened version taste nasty.

Here's the offensive part (grin): I MUCH prefer the taste of those powdered teas--like Lipton and 4C. (runs quickly)

The first part gets you permanently branded as a no-good Yankee.

The second part, well... we'll give you a 15 second headstart.

[Errata]

I drink a ton of unsweetened iced tea, particularly iced green tea. Also a lot of water, but I don't feel like water all the time. I used to drink diet soda, but I don't even really like soda any more, diet or not.

Originally Posted by llewtrah

I second cold herbal teas, but if you have to sweeten them there is no real improvement in terms of diet.

It could still be a positive step. There are a combination of problems with soda, and the sweetener is just one factor. Iced tea with a little sweetener can still be an improvement over diet soda, especially if you use Stevia or Splenda and use it sparingly. And it's an intermediate step that would make it easier to wean yourself onto unsweetened iced tea.

[purpleiguana]

I never used to like drinking water. Yuck! But three pregnancies cured me of that. You have to drink so much of the stuff when you're pregnant and breastfeeding. It's now actually my preferred drink. I also go for fruit juices, but they have to be a bit on the sour side... like lemonade or a cranberry mix or pomegranate or something like that. Sweeter things like apple juice just don't do it for me.

When I was younger, I drank soda like it was the only thing in the world. I've really gotten off of it. Even now, if I go for a Sprite, the carbonation dang near tears up my throat and soft palate.

[mags]

I like almost all the flavors of Crystal Light. Also, sugar free Koolaid (which is, like the Crystal Light, available in single serving packages as well as ones for two quarts) tastes to me just like regular.

If you like caffeine, Crystal Light has a couple flavors (only available in single servings, at least around here) that have caffeine.

In an attempt to cut down on my soda consumption (SO is convinced the acid is bad for my teeth), I started only allowing myself anything flavored when I was eating. If I was just thirsty, I had water. After years of never drinking water, I've learned to genuinely like it.

[DoubleNaughtSaleen]

Slow and steady is the way to break the soda habit. I went from soda to fruit juice to flavored sparkling water to still water. I still let myself have a soda once a week or so.

I don't like OVER sweet tea. A little bit of sugar brings out the flavor, but it shouldn't be like drinking syrup. I'm not a sweets person anyway, so I like that bitterness of unsweetned tea.

I'll second Perrier with Lemon flavor. You can also get True Lemon, Lime, or Orange to add to plain sparkling water, too.

[snapdragonfly]

I like low sodium seltzer with a very generous squeeze of lime in it. It's not sweet at all, but the fizzy is pleasant.

Unfortunately I think anything with artificial sweetener in it is suspect for weight problems, if I recall correctly it's the artificial sweetener tricking the brain so you aren't satisfied or something to that effect, so if it's tea, Koolaid, Crystal Light, or whatever, it might as well be diet soda as far as that is concerned.

If you want a bit of sweet, I'd try teas with just a tiny bit of real sugar. Two teaspoons of sugar is all of 32 calories. You can't suck that down all day long, but once a day as a treat you could certainly have a small glass of sweet tea with just a couple spoons of real sugar in it.

I'd rather have that than fake sweeteners all day anyway. They all taste bitter to me, even Splenda and stevia.

[MidgardDragon]

I go with Proper for when I want "water", but it has high fructose corn syrup (among other things) so it's hardly a health thing.