I have never been able to taste coke

[Silurian]

Coke is good for cleaning toilets.

 

[Zack]

soda dehydrates you. In addition to being terrible for your teeth and weight and whatnot.

soda is bad for you but it doesn't dehydrate you. http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp

The same goes for tea, juice, milk and caffeinated sodas: One glass provides about the same amount of hydrating fluid as a glass of water. The only common drinks that produce a net loss of fluids are those containing alcohol — and usually it takes more than one of those to cause noticeable dehydration, doctors say.

 

[sophie]

soda is bad for you but it doesn't dehydrate you. http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp

amendment: soda is rather a poor choice for rehydration.

 

[bhavv]

If had a condition that could be treated with caffeine pills it would be cheaper to buy them from the chemist yourself rather than get a perscription and pay the £8.20 NHS perscription charge.

Boots the chemist are selling them for £3.65 for 48.

I get free prescriptions though because ESA.

I have chronic dizzyness / fatigue / cognitive dysfunction from my dead inner ears, but that's mostly treated now with venlafaxine. But I also need a load of caffeine before working.

I also think I need to get my venlafaxine dose bumped up should I want to work more than 20 hours, but I'm ok for now as I'm just doing 3 x 4 hour shifts on top of benefits.

 

[Silurian]

Maybe you should talk to your doctor about the caffeine tablets. The doctor may tell you to avoid caffeine.

 

[Kyriakos]

soda is bad for you but it doesn't dehydrate you. http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp

People can (and have) lived for weeks by drinking coke instead of water, although it obviously is not a good idea. I suppose one could live for a while like that prior to facing other issues.

 

[bhavv]

Maybe you should talk to your doctor about the caffeine tablets. The doctor may tell you to avoid caffeine.

Why would I avoid it if it works?

 

[Silurian]

If you are taking caffenine tablets as a medicine you should talk to your doctor about it. The doctor may tell you there is somthing better that you could do. There could also be something going on that you do not know about.

From BBC

Up to a million people in the UK have "completely preventable" severe headaches caused by taking too many painkillers, doctors have said.

They said some were trapped in a "vicious cycle" of taking pain relief, which then caused even more headaches.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19622016

 

[Hygro]

If you take caffeine tablets also take l-theanine tablets. You should probably take l-theanine tablets anyway if you take uppers in general.

L-theanine is a sedating stimulant found in tea, which is why tea feels different than coffee. Kids with ADHD who take amphetamine who take 200x2 mg (one in the morning one during lunch) get deeper sleep than kids who take amphetamine only.

Caffeine isn't amphetamine but the similarities are significant.

 

[civvver]

First, there's a difference in Coke from different countries. I remember the first time I ever had a can of Coke on a trip to the States (a friend and I spent Labor Day weekend on a trip to the PBS station in Spokane when Sylvester McCoy was on a cross-country tour of PBS stations to promote Doctor Who). Saturday night was a Coke-and-pizza-and-Doctor-Who night at the motel (the station manager had introduced us to four guys at the station who'd also made the trip: "You gals're from Calgary - there's four fellas here from Edmonton, maybe y'all know each other"), and that was my first time drinking American Coke. My friend tasted it first and she got a funny look on her face: "This doesn't taste right."

I'm surprised no one seemed to answer you directly yet, but the ingredients are different. Almost all pop (I'm from michigan and we call soda pop) in the US has corn syrup to sweeten it, while many other countries use real sugar. If we want real sugar coke here you have to buy it in glass bottles imported from mexico.

It all started in the 80s, coke wanted to switch to corn syrup cus it's a lot cheaper since the US produces tons of corn, but they knew it tasted different. So they come out with "new coke" which was a totally different flavor. People hated it, so they brought back the original coke and named it "classic." If you buy coke now that's what you are getting, coca-cola classic. Only they did a bait and switch and replaced the sugar with corn syrup, but people were fine with it cus it was so much better than new coke.

Anyway you don't really realize how crappy american coke is until you have the real sugar one to compare to and then you're like how the heck do I drink this crap?

For coffee, this may sound absurd, but I actually like mcdonald's regular coffee over starbucks, tim horton's (we have tons of those in Michigan) and dunkin donuts. Most coffee here kinda sucks like if you get it at a regular restaurant, it's probably some GFS brand or something, but if you have a single cup brewer like a keurig or nespresso you can get some good ones. I don't drink it much though cus it gives me massive acid reflux. I can only drink one cup at a time maybe twice a week.

 

[Zack]

Personally I feel the taste upgrade between coke with real sugar and "regular" coke is overstated. I didn't notice much difference in american coke and european coke, though I obviously wasn't able to compare them side by side or anything. (To be fair I'm not exactly a connoisseur.)

 

[Farm Boy]

Cane sugar soda gives me heartburn. <shrugs> McD's does make a decent cup of diesel, usually.

 

[Hygro]

Cane sugar doesn't often translate well to beverages. Its flavor is too distinct.

 

[Borachio]

I don't like hot drinks though, so when I'm in the cafe at work, its some form of soda to rehydrate.

Oh yeah. Caffeine, fiercely diuretic, will certainly work to rehydrate you! But maybe not as effectively as water.

(Though now I do some research on the matter, maybe caffeine isn't diuretic at all. Opinions seem to differ.)

 

[madviking]

mexican coke is better than american coke, but i'm not going to lose any sleep over the difference.

 

[REDY]

Hmm isnt it about special occasions nostalgia? Because when I think about good times with coca cola I remember vacations on beach abroad...

 

[Farm Boy]

I have those for some terrible fructose drink they have in Ireland. And I remember it being terrible. Yet they're still there.

 

[Quintillus]

I didn't realize the main point of consuming coke was the taste.

Going along with the HFCS theory, Mexican coke is an option, as is kosher-for-Passover Coke. If you can taste those, HFCS is the culprit; Mexican coke should be easier to come by this time of year.

I do find there to be somewhat of a difference between HFCS coke and cane sugar coke. Not enough that I'm going to make a big deal of it if HFCS coke is what's available, but I'm considerably more likely to get Coke at a restaurant if it's Mexican coke than "regular" American coke. Which in turn I'm more likely to get than Diet Coke, since the difference between aspartame and HFCS is larger than between HFCS and sugar IMO. Though it's less pronounced in soda than it is in yoghurt; get two Yoplait yoghurts of the same flavor, one in the light aspartame version, and one in the sugar version, and it's quite a stark difference*.

* I think they may have switched to sucralose in recent years, so it may not be possible to buy the aspartame version anymore.

I've also had sugar beet Coke; can't tell a difference between that and cane sugar, though I haven't done a side-by-side comparison.

I recommend Mate. Or ice tea.

I do second the Mate recommendation as a caffeination option. I keep both it and black tea available, though I enjoy hot tea more than cold tea.

Another option may be caffeinated gum, which is a thing nowadays. I've never been that into chewing gum, hence tea being my preferred mode of caffeination, but it's probably better for you than drinking soda all the time.

 

[bhavv]

I already tried getting methylphenidate or modafinil and they wouldn't let me (adults aren't allowed ADHD medication unless diagnosed during childhood in the UK).

UK GPs are suckage. Caffeine's my only choice on top of adrenergic reuptake inhibitors.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Caffeine will dehydrate you so not very good for hydration.

I think the dehydration part is a myth, or at least disputed.

IIRC, while coffee does have somewhat of a dehydration effect through being a mild diuretic, it's more than outweighed by the water present in the coffee, so you still get a net positive amount of fluid into your system, though just not quite as much as you would drinking water. Likewise beer is fine - you have to get up to stuff like neat vodka before alcohol will have a net negative effect on your body's fluids, and if you're drinking neat vodka to quench thirst, you probably have bigger problems.

Coffee is fine for hydration and so are most water based beverages.