On True Indulgence

I’m no stranger to indulgences. I love quite a few of the seven deadly sins: sloth (love sleeping in), wrath (who doesn’t love a little wrath here and there?), and gluttony (I wrote an entire blog about big sloppy meals for God’s sake). My taste in indulgences has changed somewhat in the past few decades, though. Back when I was a semi-rambunctious teenager, my friends and I would have sleepovers where we’d stay up all night playing Halo 3 and seeing who could drink the most Dr. Peppers. 1) Yes, we were enormous nerds and we still are. 2) I’m just as confused as all of you as to how none of us ended up with diabetes. 3) There’s still nothing better than an all day/night LAN with the boys.

One of the biggest changes between then and now is my taste in sodas. Back then, I could destroy Dr. Pepper, crush Coke, smash Sprite, and annihilate A&W root beer. Now, though, all I have to do is think about a full sugar soda and my teeth start to hurt. Just writing this intro has put me right on the edge of a sugar-induced coma. I don’t really drink too many flavored drinks anymore, especially if you don’t count La Croix (and there are a LOT of jokes on the internet revolving around the lack of flavor in La Croix). But, every now and then, there is literally and I mean literally nothing better than a cold, crisp, refreshing Diet Coke.

Growing up, as far as my memory serves, Diet Coke was almost exclusively marketed towards women. It must have worked because every single recollection I have of them is my mom or someone else’s mom drinking them and loving every sip. My understanding is that Coke Zero was created just to give men a zero-sugar soda without the connotations of “diet” and all the gendered bullshit that goes along with that word. I could write a doctoral thesis paper on how wild it is to create an entirely reformulated drink just because of patriarchal gender norms but someone has definitely already done it and they don’t really let you put jokes in academic papers (just ask my college professors).

The second craziest thing about Coke Zero existing is that Diet Coke is perfect. There is nothing in the carbonated beverage world that measures up to Diet Coke! Not Coke Zero, not Diet Pepsi, not regular Coke, not RC Cola, not Shasta Cola, not Zevia, not Faygo, not Jolt Cola, and certainly not Fentimans (and no, I didn’t know most of those existed before today).

Sometimes you want a coffee, sometimes you want a beer, sometimes you want a glass of water, and sometimes none of those things will satisfy your cravings. That’s when Diet Coke comes to the rescue. Whether it’s in a can, a bottle, an ice-cold glass, or a plastic cup it’s always perfect…at least until it gets warm and flat, and then BLEH.

What about you? What’s your ride-or-die soda?