Diet Soda/Coffee?

In terms of health benefits of soda, eggs are not inherently healthy or unhealthy nor is soda. What matters for health is your diet and exercise routine as a whole and there's absolutely no reason a healthy diet can't include both eggs and soda.

Oh please, there's nothing inherently unhealthy about soda? Really? Maybe you should ask a dentist! And there's nothing inherently healthy about eggs? Now you're talking just as crazy as the people who are afraid of soda.

That's like saying that there is nothing inherently healthy about broccoli and nothing inherently unhealthy about Honey Smacks (HA!). Sure, I guess you could fit both of them into a healthy diet, but it doesn't mean that they're equivalent in terms of health.

What I'm saying is that construing any particular food as "healthy" or "unhealthy" is an illogical way to look at things, and rather what's important is the macro picture of what you eat (i.e., your diet as a whole). Let's say you define chicken as healthy - what if I eat 4000 calories worth of chicken every day. Still healthy? Honey Smacks (whatever that is) are unhealthy.. okay, cool, but what if I eat them pre-workout, brush my teeth afterwards and hit all my calorie/nutrient goals for the day? Am I damaging my health?

In short, it's not productive to consider any food "healthy" or "unhealthy" in isolation and your time would be better spent focusing on the totality of what you're eating in terms of energy and nutrition. Otherwise, it's very possible to eat an unhealthy diet of all "healthy" foods.

Just b/c a balanced diet is important does not mean that junk food isn't junk food. It's important for your long term health to have adequate protein, lots of fruits and veggies, adequate fiber, adequate healthy fats, adequate potassium, antioxidants, etc, etc. Some foods help meet these nutritional goals, while others are just completely devoid of nutrition.

Chicken does "contribute" to a healthy diet. Honeysmacks do not contribute to a healthy diet. If you eat plenty of "healthy" foods then you can afford to have some Honeysmacks without doing any damage . But it is important to realize some foods are just empty calories, while others are actually nutritious.

As I said in another thread, I don't understand this type of comment - well I understand what you are saying about "junk food" being ok as part of a balanced diet - but how does that relate to the thread??

nobody is claiming they drink diet sodas or coffee for the nutritional benefits, are they??

They are saying they like coffee, they start their day better with coffee, they like diet sodas or they drink them instead of regular sodas to cut down on sugar/calorie intake - any of these reasons can also be part of a healthy balanced diet.

Coffee/diet sodas are not "healthy" or "nutritious" , nobody is saying that - but that doesn't mean they are harmful or people cant safely consume them, if they want to.

Why do Honey Smacks not contribute to a healthy diet? You simply conclusive state they do not, but in what way do they lack the ability to contribute in any way, shape or form to a healthy diet? Must every food contain ample micronutrients? Is your need for micronutrients on a daily basis infinite? At a minimum, what if you need some carbs - are you seriously suggesting the only "healthy" way to get those carbs is from fruit and veggies and that eating a bowl of cereal is necessarily bad for your health?

I don't really see the need to repeat myself. I already explained why Honey Smacks do not contribute to a healthy diet (i.e., practically pure sugar, minimal nutrients, high calories, etc). There is literally a plethora of data on both the long and short term health benefits of fruits and veggies.

I never said that eating a bowl of cereal is bad for your health. But in general most cereals don't have a great ratio of helpful nutrients to calories. It won't harm you to eat some cereal, but if you eat cereal at the expense of eating plenty of fruits and veggies than you'll likely be worse off for it. Or at least that is what most currently available scientific studies suggest. And no, micronutrient "needs" are not infinite. But more micronutrients are generally associated with health benefits. Do you happen to the maximum amount of each antioxidant and micronutrient at which point any additional amount of them is no longer beneficial?

Honestly your view on this subject is both overly complicated and yet is overly simplistic in some ways. There are situations where fruit is fine but there are situations where other types of sugars are fine as well. For example, there are situations where you may want dextrose instead of fructose because of how your body processes these sugars differently, and in those situations fruit is a poor choice because of its fructose content. In that example, a candy made of pure dextrose may well one of the best foods to fit your goals, even though you would call that candy "unhealthy." In that scenario, an overly simplistic choice of a "healthy" apple is the wrong choice because of its higher fructose content. On the other hand, you're making dietary decisions needlessly complicated by trying to balance healthy and unhealthy foods (i.e., meaningless labels) with consuming everything in moderation, hitting your macros, hitting your micros, hitting your nutrient goals and so on.

Okay well it looks like you want to get technical about minutia. If you're trying to aggressively bulk up and want to strongly activate the mTOR pathway then fruit is a bit suboptimal compared to other carbs that break down to mostly just glucose/dextrose. So I will concede that in the setting of "aggressive bulking" one could make an argument for eating foods that are generally considered to be junk food. But I doubt that eating any more than 20% of your calories from junk food would be a good idea, even when bulking. And there are plenty of carbs that break down to glucose that aren't just sugar without any additional nutritional benefits.

If you're talking to someone who does not track their calories or their macros, I can see a potential use in labeling foods "healthy" and "unhealthy." But to someone tracking everything they eat and their nutritional goals, those terms are simply meaningless labels.

Tracking your macros is great for short term body composition. But if you're interested in long term health then things are a lot more complicated.

I cut out caffeine completely during my last pregnancy and I felt pretty good. That was about four years ago. I just started drinking a homemade unsweetened iced latte in the morning--I include the milk I use in my logging, and count it as part of my breakfast. I always thought I was very sensitive to caffeine, because if I drank any I had a hard time sleeping at night. However, after losing 30 pounds and upping my activity level, I sleep much better now and the caffeine I drink around 7 or 8 am doesn't affect me at all. i look forward to it and I even have a better run in the morning after my coffee.

That's the only caffeine I have all day, though. I think if I drank it in the afternoon it would probably disturb my sleep. I stick to decaf green tea in the afternoon or evening, if I want something other than water.

Diet soda, though, makes me retain water something awful, and soda in general just makes me feel icky.

I don't really drink soda, not because it's *bad* for you, but because there's nothing *good* for you in it and I would rather drink water. If you enjoy it, I see no reason to avoid drinking it, as long as you are receiving adequate nutrition in the other foods/drinks you consume and you are brushing your teeth.

Have you tried green tea? It is supposed to give you a little metabolism boost and it has caffeine. Most weight plans will allow coffee, diet soda, and tea if you are not adding sugar and cream. They say you need 2 glasses of water to replace one serving of a beverage with caffeine.