My quest for finding and reviewing the cheapest products possible has taken an interesting turn. This time I roped in a group of friends to tackle a twist on the Pepsi challenge - testing an array of sugar free cola beverages, seeing what comes out on top and if the no-name brands can stand up to the titans.
The article from Aaron Davies about blind testing diet colas is a really interesting one for me. As a little background info for you, Aaron is an ex Jehovah's Witness and was a NZ Skeptics committee member a few years ago. In the article I'm the “Mark” mentioned in the testing. So, if you've read the article already, you'll know that when challenged with picking out my favoured beverage, Diet Coke, from a line-up of identical looking drinks in identical looking cups, I successfully identified the Diet Coke.
Let me preface this article by stating, mustering my best Dr McCoy impression, that I'm a midwife and am certainly not a sports nutritionist, dietician, food scientist, government bureaucrat, etc. I profess total ignorance on this topic, and welcome any of our readers who do have the appropriate expertise to write in or join us on this week's podcast to share their knowledge.
I have a feeling we've written about Ārepa before, but as a refresher, it's a kiwi brand that produces “health drink” products that claims to make brains work better.
So, I'm a Diet Coke drinker. I don't drink hot drinks, and never have for my whole life. At least from my teenage years, when hot drinks were introduced in the form of tea, I always found them too hot and would burn my mouth. So, at least for the past few decades, I've consumed a reasonable* amount of Diet Coke.
This past weekend I visited the Go Green Expo, which is a show with the general theme of “green” or being ecologically mindful. Such things are usually a magnet for companies promoting bogus products in addition to those with genuine solutions to becoming “greener”.
In a world where for some 2021 is already giving 2020 a run for its money, I'm trying to appreciate my freedoms. That includes the freedom to relax, drink cocktails and enjoy the balmy weather, and not get stressed out about where to put cocktail flavoured suppositories to solve make-believe problems invented by the wellness industry.
Research is coming to light that antioxidants in food and drinks are not useful to aid health, and may actually be damaging to us.
Insecurities about water quality have led to a boom in sales of bottled water. But the health benefits of the phenomenon are probably minimal.
There are plenty of things which are better to drink than distilled water, says John Riddell. But then, most of you probably knew that anyway.