Coke Zero as Water?

No. Coke zero is chemicals.

You may not count it as water.

It's 99% water...what do you say to this?

I realize that no one has posted on this thread in about a year, but I was just wondering the same thing that the OP was asking, so Google led me here! I just have some questions/comments in regards to things that others have posted.

First of all, the "8 cups of water a day" concept seems pretty low. I've always heard the best way to determine how much water a person needs to drink in one day is to drink half of their body weight in ounces. Meaning if you weigh 200 pounds, you would take half of your weight (i.e. 100) and drink that many ounces of water per day. 100 ounces converts to 12.5 cups. In order to get away with drinking only 8 cups of water a day (which is 64 ounces) like many people are suggesting, the person would need to weigh no more than 128 pounds. Therefore, unless we're talking about a much smaller female, 8 cups a day is only about 60-70% of what is actually recommended.

That being said, it's very difficult to drink upwards of 12 cups of water a day (this is probably the average amount for adult males), especially if it's just "plain water". I don't think there would be any harm whatsoever in substituting 1 of those 12 cups for a can of diet pop/soda. To me it seems a lot like the difference between white and whole wheat bread. Sure the whole wheat bread is slightly better for you, the same way plain water is slightly better than a carbonated beverage. But in the grand scheme of things, does it really matter? A slice of white and whole wheat bread are pretty much identical if you read the nutritional information (the whole grain bread might net you 1 extra gram of fiber, but the calories/carbs/protein/fat/etc. are all identical. I'm using the bread analogy because I think it's the same way with water and diet pop/soda. The water may be a better choice, but if you've already consumed 5 or 6 bottles of water to get to 10 or 12 cups, then 1 can isn't going to hurt.

From purely a weight-loss (or weight-maintenance) perspective, the diet or "zero" or "max" drinks still have 0 calories, 0 fat, 0 carbs, 0 sugar. The diet Mountain Dew I'm drinking right now only has 3% of the daily recommended intake for sodium. For comparison's sake, I also have a 500-mL bottle of Nestle Pure Life water, and even it has 2% of the daily recommended sodium allowance. So as someone else said earlier, unless you drink cases and cases of it a day, that extra 1% of sodium is not going to be significant enough to cause water retention.

Now to actually get to my question... I read a few people's posts talking about how caffeine is a diuretic and therefore will make you lose more water than you actually gain. I'm not that knowledgeable with caffeine, but I was also under the impression that caffeine is beneficial for weight loss. I've even had a personal trainer at the gym recommend I drink a cup of black coffee each day because the caffeine jumpstarts your metabolism and increases fat burning. Caffeine is also listed as a main ingredient in many weight loss pills because caffeine increases your heart rate which in turn will burn more calories and body fat. But as I said I'm not overly knowledgeable about the actual effects of caffeine, so I'm wondering if anyone can confirm or discredit this information?

But to summarize if someone drinks 1 can of Coke Zero or Diet Coke / Pepsi Max, etc. I don't see how this could be significant enough to cause any adverse effects. That being said, I know there are also a lot of people out there who think just drinking diet pop will make them skinny without changing their diets at all. I used to work at McDonalds and it would always make me laugh in my head when a 300-pound guy walks in, orders a double Big Mac meal, supersize the fries, and then get a diet Coke (because he's watching his calories...lol). But if people are eating properly and consuming enough plain water as well, surely this can't be as harmful as some posters are insinuating?

Can anyone confirm the information about caffeine's effects on the body for me? All thoughts/comments are appreciated! Thanks

Chemical **** storm

:yawn: