Years ago, after a lecture to a first year survey class, one of the students came up to me afterwards and said "now I'm afraid to eat!". I'd been discussing the development of industrial agriculture and its associated environmental impacts. Pretty basic stuff. I'm sure Michael Pollan's students get paranoid all the time.
Around that time, I was very anti carbonated soft drinks. I was particularly anti Coca Cola for so many reasons, and for even more reasons, I was anti aspartame sweetened Diet Coke. I just didn't drink that stuff. Didn't drink it for over a decade, as a matter of fact. It just wasn't part of my lifestyle.
But, as mentioned recently, then the chance to win a trip to Turkey (or a bunch of other places I want to go much less than Turkey) through the iCoke.ca promotion. Which I discovered by seeing an ad. And then I discovered the icoke participating beverage cups at the place where I get my coffee. And I bought one. And I entered the contest. It told me in really loud letters that I now had 1 entry in the draw. That sounded pretty pathetic.
So! I have twelve (12!) entries in the draw now. That's a lot of pop. And I'm not going to pour that much sugar into my body. So, when a trip to Turkey is a very tiny possibility (tinier than getting a raise that would pay for a trip to Turkey, for sure, and yet, I don't march into my boss' office and demand more money so I can go to Turkey), there go all the I don't do aspartame and I don't drink pop things. That's 12 Diet Cokes.
And for 12 work days (the timing of which correlates perfectly to the timing of my 12 entries) I drank Diet Coke. And for 12 work days, I was tired. So so so tired. I'd have the pop instead of the afternoon coffee, around 3:30. Instead of picking me up, though, it caused me to fade very quickly. By the time I got home, around six or seven, I'd want to sleep. Every single evening. Not on weekends - but hey, on weekends, I'm bopping around in my kayak, so I'm excited about what I'm doing, no time to be sleepy.
And I puzzled over the sleepiness. There's work stress, sure, but that's a constant. I looked at what I ate - crappy food, but no crappier than the last six months, really. I decided to blame it on lack of exercise - I had this episode of intense leg pain in March that took me out of all that I was doing, and since then I haven't gotten back into the groove of the gym or the long bike rides or the other high intesity cardiovascular things (it still hurts sometimes, and I've lost fitness, so it's not *fun*). But I've been a slug for three months now. Hmmmm.
So I stopped the pop, three days ago. And I'm not tired anymore. I don't believe every nutjob website out there, especially not ones that have names like "The Truth about Aspartame", because... well... I have critical thinking skills. And I could find a website to back every weird theory I have (and if I didn't, I could of course create one). But "fatigue" is a rather frequently reported side effect. I don't know if there's a causal connection. I also don't care.
I know that in my very small case study (n=1) with a very limited number of observations (12 days with aspartame, 100s without), my evidence is this: no pop = alert. Pop = sleepy.
I really quite like spending my evenings puttering, not snoozing. So trip to Turkey or no trip to Turkey, bye bye pop. Though if one of those 12 entries wins, I'll happily pose with a case of the stuff. I just won't drink it. Because I can sleep at home, I don't need to go to Turkey to do that.
p.s. Not looking for alternatives. Like I said, I don't actually *like* pop very much, and I don't need recommendations about other sweeteners. I am well informed. But a potential trip to Turkey trumps well informed most days. Just saying.
Posted by Johanna at June 8, 2006 04:13 PM