Vice Is Bad for a Reason --NYTimes

[Demeter]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/fashion/20age.html?ref=health

May 20, 2007

The Age of Dissonance

Vice Is Bad for a Reason

By BOB MORRIS

I was reaching for a bottle of Diet Coke in the supermarket the other day when a new kind caught my eye: Diet Coke Plus, supplemented with vitamins and minerals.

“This is hilarious,” I said as I pointed it out to the shopper next to me.

“Isn’t there enough stuff in Diet Coke already?” she said.

Indeed. And none of those ingredients is actually trying to be good for you.

In this age of body-as-temple Puritanism, Diet Coke flies in the face of all nutritional accountability. Its ingredients, although as safe as those in any sodas, are discussed as if they were Chernobyl runoff. So it has a polarizing effect that makes people either deride it as toxic or adore it as elixir from Aspartame, the goddess of the very thin.

Ask people if they drink Diet Coke, and they’ll either look at you as if you were asking if they drank gasoline or they’ll tell you they drink six cans a day, including at breakfast.

A highly public roster of Diet-Coke-alites includes Harvey Weinstein, Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Elton John drinks it at concerts. Victoria Beckham is reported in a recent issue of Newsweek to have said she drinks it all the time because she can’t stand the taste of water.

Although diet soda can never be technically addictive, it is the one vice people can say they have that isn’t really a vice. So why would anyone want to undermine Diet Coke’s appeal by giving it any redeeming value? It’s bad. People who drink it like to think they’re bad. That’s good, especially when there’s no sugar involved....Anne Slowey, an editor at Elle, still recalls the best she ever had, near the Great Wall of China. “If I want the Diet Coke of my dreams, I have to go to Beijing,” she told me. But Diet Coke Plus? It rubs her the wrong way, as it does many.

“I just don’t want someone mixing vitamins in with my vice,” she said.

Especially if you can taste them. The other day, Ira popped open his first can of the stuff. Ptooey.

“I don’t care for the aftertaste,” he said. “It’s like having a sweater on my tongue.” With that he ceremoniously poured it down the drain.

Maybe all those vitamins will do the plumbing some good.

E-mail: [e-mail]

[Joe Chi Minh]

1. I read the other day, (probably in the UK Daily Mail) that too liberal

consumption of multi-vitamins raises the incidences of cancer, although the researchers don't know why.

No, I've just checked. It must have been in the Daily Mirror.

[Igel]

4. Regular large doses, IIRC,

and specifically prostate cancer.

Occasional or low doses, I don't think, had much of an effect.

[Joe Chi Minh]

6. Yes, that was it. Thanks.

[Double T]

2. The amount of vitamins in a bottle of Diet Coke Plus is a small percentage of the US-RDA

The new product tastes OK and the vitamins are a small added bonus.

[depakid]

3. Age of Nihilism

Amazing that the Times would publish such vacuous drivel.

Then again, maybe not....

[Demeter]

5. It Was the Style Section, After All

and it could have a serious side, if you think about it, esp. in a political context, where our President of Vice, Dicko himself, could learn a lesson or two....

[camero]

7. Diet Coke plus...blech

Has a real metallic taste to it.:puke:

[Cobalt-60]

8. Aspertame carries the taint of Rumsferatu

Everything that NAZI jerk touches is garbage.
I'm back to Honey and pure cain sugar.