In a world where people are concerned about their weight and calorie intake, finding a low or zero-calorie treat that also satisfies seems like a never-ending quest.
After all, celery and iceberg lettuce are both low-calorie snacks, but they aren’t exactly the most satisfying things to munch on.
So you reach for a Diet Coke and notice that a 12-ounce can have zero calories. How exactly does that work?
How does coke zero have no calories? despite being sweet and fizzy and satisfying to drink?
It’s true, Diet Coke has zero calories.
And it can do that because it takes some chemical shortcuts to remove and replace the main caloric component in Classic Coca-Cola.
That caloric ingredient is, of course, actual sugar or regular sugar.
Diet Coke replaces the sugar with a low-calorie substitute, aspartame.So does diet coke have calories?
By doing so, it turns a soft drink that normally has 240 calories into a Diet soda or zero-calorie drink.
To understand how this happens in detail, we need to discuss what calories are precisely, and how they are calculated.
Here is a quick video explaining exactly why soda can have zero or low calories
What’s in a Calorie
The first thing that you should understand is that when you see food and a. Coca-Cola diet drinks label and it says 300 Calories (note the capital C), it actually means 300 kilocalories or 300,000 actual calories.
That’s because the unit of a single calorie is so small, that it actually doesn’t really mean much.
To get to a meaningful degree of measurement, The food industry decided that for the sake of calculation, using Calories (meaning kilocalories) instead of calories would be easier for everyone.
A calorie is a unit of energy. It is the amount of energy that is required to heat 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. So a Calorie is the amount of energy required to heat a kilogram (or a single liter) of water by 1 degree Celsius. This unit of measurement was invented by Antoine Lavoisier, who originally used the term to describe the internal temperature and heat of the soda lovers human body. So now that you know what a Calorie is, you’re probably wondering how they are calculated.How are Calories Measured?
This device was essentially a sealed chamber surrounded by water.
A piece of food that was dehydrated was placed inside the chamber and set on fire.
The temperature of the surrounding water was tracked, and based on how much the temperature rose the number of calories in the food item was calculated.
At first, this was fine, but as our understanding of the body and how it digests foods advanced, several problems began to creep in.
For example, a piece of whole grain bread with high fiber content is going to also ignite the fiber.That will cause a miscalculation of the Calorie content , because we now understand that fiber is not absorbed into the blood stream, and therefore shouldn’t count toward the number of Calories in the bread.
Modern calculations are done using the Atwater indirect system, which does a calculation based on the energy-producing macronutrients that a piece of food contains. The macronutrients that are tracked are fat, protein, and carbohydrates.
Alcohol is also tracked, despite not really being a nutrient, it is a significant source of calories.
When carbs are calculated, the mass of fiber is also calculated and its caloric contribution is subtracted.
The values for these substances were calculated by placing them in a modern calorimeter and representing the averages of the various substances. That’s because different sugars will produce varying amounts of energy depending on whether they are simple or complex sugars.
How is diet coke 0 calories?
And if you look, you can see that Diet Coke soft drink has 0 grams of fat, 0 grams of carbohydrates, 0 grams of actual sugar or real sugar, 0 grams of protein, and 0 grams of alcohol (although that is understood, even if it’s not directly listed).
That means that according to the Atwater Indirect System because Diet Coke has zero macronutrients, it has zero calories. Is diet coke really 0 calories? Yes, It is a fact that calories in a can of coke are almost zero.
You might wonder if the calorie count only counts those four macronutrients, what about the other diet coke calories? Don’t they at least have some caloric value? Let’s take a look at the ingredient list to see what they are and look at how many calories are in each.
What’s in that Diet Coke?
Does diet coke really have 0 calories? Lets see how. According to the Coca-Cola Classic (popular sodas) website, the ingredient list for Diet Coke is the following:
CARBONATED WATER, CARAMEL COLOR, ASPARTAME, PHOSPHORIC ACID, POTASSIUM BENZOATE (TO PROTECT TASTE), real sugar, NATURAL FLAVORS, CITRIC ACID, Fructose Corn Syrup, AND CAFFEINE.
Going through the ingredients one by one we can find that there really are no significant sources of calories to be seen.
So, looking at all of the ingredients, the only ingredient that adds any Calories is aspartame, but it only adds 0.72 Calories. As this total is under 1 calorie, according to the FDA, Coca-Cola is well within its rights to call Diet Coke a zero-calorie drink or weight loss drink. Although regular diet soda consumption causes heart disease.
Putting It Together
Does diet coke actually have 0 calories? Aboslutely, Diet Coke is a zero-calorie drink because of the removal of sugar and replacing it with aspartame, which provides only a fraction of the calories and he’s in weight loss.
The rest of the ingredients in both Classic Coca-Cola and Diet Coke (diet beverages) are negligible in their caloric additions.
This is because of the caffeine and Potassium Benzoate preservatives. You or diet soda drinkers may wish to consider alternative drinks such as creating flavored water with SodaStream.
If you have any questions, please let drop me a note.
I’m the owner and blogger here at SodaPopCraft.Com. I’m a soft drinks enthusiast, bringing you all I know and research from the world of Beverages, Soda Pop, Soft Drinks, and many more.
I hope it inspires you to make Healthier, and Creative Drinks at Home.
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