The Sweet Life — Catholics and Diabetes

Originally Posted by John Lazarus

Welcome to the first forum thread!

I *loathe* diet sodas. I don't know if it's the aspartame or the sucralose, but there is a certain "wrongness" to the sweet taste. Sure, it's sweet, but my taste buds reject it -- it's the wrong kind of sweet. I can often smell it (like in diet Pepsi -- brrr!) but most often it's the taste, Coke Zero's claim to taste "just like Coke" notwithstanding. I thought it might be mental/psychosomatic, but I have drunk sodas I had *no idea* were diet, until I got "that taste".

So, as a diabetic, I am now looking for alternatives to either sugary sodas -- which I can't have -- and diet ones -- which I won't.

Starting out, I really couldn't deal with club soda/sparkling mineral water, the only non-sweetened fizzy drink out there -- it reminded me too much of Alka Seltzer. So I had a little brainstorm: steep a flavoured herbal teabag in the club soda.

I have tried cranberry, lemon, orange, pomegranate, and raspberry. I must say, it's not bad -- you get at least a bit of fruity flavour and aroma, but no sugaryness, artificial or otherwise. You might need to practise a bit to get the steeping just right -- I found it could get quite unpalatable if left too long.

My wife brought the idea to her Weight Watcher's meeting, and it really took off; the group leader gave her a "Bravo!" sticker to give to me.