#aspartame-addict

[jadeempire]

3, 23, amd 36 for the Rook asks?

3. What was Rook’s life before their faction?

City elf! Still working out the specifics but she is definitely a city elf. I think the warden who recruited her was Dalish, which is how I justify her knowing some Dalish stuff

23. What does Rook wear in the off hours? Do they like dressing up?

I like the Grey Warden casuals bc they show off the Arms. I think she likes dressing up but does it so so so rarely bc of 1.) previously mentioned city elf background makes her reluctant to waste money on fancy clothes 2.) wardens are usually too busy to dress up and 3.) it's like. a treat. for Special Occasions. for her at least

36. What would Rook say are their flaws?

Wrynn would say she's a bit too pessimistic at times, and she has trouble discerning intent and meaning behind tone

[karama9]

This pisses me off mostly because it's going to cause an uptick of people telling me I shouldn't drink diet soda because aspartame is 'super bad for you'. There was a study a while back that was reported as concluding aspartame was harmful. Except the part that wasn't reported was that it would be harmful only for insane inhuman quantities, every day, for a long time.

Oh, and the part where it was discredited and refuted.

This will just make people who were already on the aspartame fear train to double down.

And as a reminder, isn't "all baked goods and also fries" also in that category?

[sodajerking]

Dr Pepper Creamy coconut

Okay so the lady at the food truck by my apartment has started to recognize me. I was there to get chai with my friend hours before I bought this drink and she said "what no sandwich?" And I had to sheepishly confess that I was coming back later that evening for a sandwich and butter chicken fries. I'm not sure if I want to be recognized for my food truck addiction but I can't help that I am drawn to 10$ street food like a moth to a spitting flame.

And on the subject of allure that seems to surpass free will, I am also drawn to dr Pepper limited edition flavours.

Regarding dr Pepper, I've expressed this in the past but I do not consider it an alternative to coke or Pepsi and resent it's inclusion in such arguments. Dr Pepper has loftier ambitions than being a mere cola, it has a fruity cherry sweetness hidden amongst those 23 flavours, and teases with a subtle creaminess of a root beer without daring to be so boldly medicinal. Of the more readily available soft drinks, it's easily one of the best, and was my cherished source of many calories in college. I refuse to try diet dr pepper because I sincerely worry that it's lustrous flavour is delicate stack of gold foils that would collapse by the wind of aspartame.

But I digress; needless to say, I will try any new iteration of the good doctor, simply because I strongly believe that on the rare occasion the cocacola corporation dares to play with such a perfect recipe, it is never a mere novelty but a careful consideration of precisely what concoction of syrups will be most harmonious with those 23 flavours.

This can was no exception. The slight creaminess of original doctor pepper plays so perfectly off the coconut that you'd think there was some kind of fat in this drink, as other coconut sodas I've mentioned in the past have done for their creaminess, but no oils are found swimming in it's depths. I would only critique the fact that the coconut taste here is muted by the dr pepper taste. I happen to love coconut so I wish it was stronger, but i do worry that making it stronger would make this an altogether different drink so perhaps it's already perfect.

S tier though not as good as the 3$ food truck chai

[anexperimentallife]

Alex and the Oracle

This is a humorous short I sold many, many years ago, before I even knew I was autistic, but the rights have reverted to me, so I'm in the middle of a rewrite/update in preparation for re-release as part of an "Alex And" collection. The premise (inspired by some of my own weird impulses) was, "What if things that might LOOK like random impulses or compulsions were actually a form of precognition?"

Alex and the Oracle by D. Robert Hamm

The first thing you need to know about Jimmy Cane is that no matter what anybody says about him, he’s not crazy. And I don’t say that just because he’s my best friend. Sure, he once showed up to a black-tie affair wearing lederhosen and leading a ferret on a leash, but I think that falls under "eccentric." Also, in his defense, I’m pretty sure lederhosen are considered formal wear in some parts of the world, he was wearing a black tie, and the invitation did say, “and guest.”

Okay, so maybe he’s a little bit crazy, but if you had Jimmy’s ‘gift,’ you would be, too.

See, Jimmy’s a precog, but not in the traditional sense. He doesn’t actually know what’s going to happen; he just gets these compulsions that usually seem to work out in the end. That whole thing with the lederhosen and the ferret? Set off a Rube Goldberg-type chain of events that saved a guy’s life. In addition to the general agitation that comes when he tries to resist acting on his compulsions, knowing that something as small as, say, what color socks you’re wearing could be a matter of life and death for someone puts a lot of pressure on a guy.

So when I let myself in over at Jimmy’s place to find him on the floor in a bathrobe surrounded by thirty or so cases of diet soda and blowing up an inflatable kiddie pool, it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever caught him doing.

“Hi, Alex,” Jimmy said between breaths, “I know, I know. Don't have all the soda yet; I just couldn't wait to get the pool ready.”

Which made perfect sense, in a Jimmy kind of way. I grabbed a couple of Blue Moons from the fridge and kicked back on the couch until he finished with the pool and plopped down next to me, panting. We clinked our bottles together, and he drained about a third of his in one long drought. He sighed and wiped sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his robe.

“Okay,” I said, “Whatcha got?”

We long ago gave up on serious predictions about the outcome of Jimmy’s compulsions, but we make a game of seeing who can come up with the most outrageous guesses. We play as a team against reality, and give ourselves points every time we out-weird what actually happens. Two-on-one odds may seem a little unfair, but reality’s been doing this a lot longer than we have, and it has the home field advantage. So far, reality is winning, and I don’t even want to talk about the point spread.

“Diet soda, kiddie pool… Gotta be a connection there,” Jimmy said. “I was thinking maybe a pile of aspartame-addicted carp showing up on my doorstep.”

“Nah, not weird enough. Make ‘em talking carp and I think we’ve got something. I got a better one, though; how about the Apocalypse is nigh, and diet soda will be the only currency of value in the aftermath?”

“Makes sense; only mutants would actually drink the stuff. But what about the pool?”

“Like you said—mutants.”

“What does a kiddie pool have to do with mutants?”

“Oh, so now I’m supposed to be an expert on genetic anomalies? Maybe it’s their religion.”

Jimmy nodded sagely and stroked the three-day growth of beard on his chin. “Hm…” he said. “Plausible. Hope you’re wrong, though; I think I’m allergic to apocalypses.”

We toasted to our brilliant predictions, and Jimmy went upstairs to get dressed so I could chauffeur him around for the day. He’s got this old VW Microbus, and while it runs great, he hates driving (everyone else hates him driving, too), plus he hadn’t really slept in a couple of days, which meant he’d be a danger to life and limb out on the road alone. (Although, knowing Jimmy, if he actually felt compelled to drive, an angel would get its wings and somebody’s dead dog would come back to life.)

I do a lot of things like that for Jimmy, but it’s not a one-sided deal. He doesn’t really benefit much personally from his gift—in fact, it often screws him over—but it does provide him with just enough resources to take care of basic needs so that he can follow his compulsions full-time with no visible means of support. That seems to include whatever I need in order to get by when I take time off whatever crappy day job I’m working at the time to give him a hand and help clean up his messes.

It’s like some kind of weird temp job where I get to go on wacky adventures with my best friend and still keep up with rent, and even though it’ll never give me financial security, and even though it’s made having any kind of decent career impossible, and even though no girlfriend I’ve found so far has been willing to put up with our little adventures for more than a few months, I challenge you to come up with a better job at any salary.

Because let me tell you, being friends with Jimmy is never boring.

After several years of this kind of thing, Jimmy was showing the strain. Over the past year, I’d seen him almost in tears a few times trying to choose between three identical boxes of cereal, and there was that time he couldn’t sleep unless he wore his shoes on the wrong feet and listened to yodeling records for three days straight. Don’t even get me started on the truckload of frozen mangoes in cold storage.

It was getting to the point where Jimmy wasn’t sure what was a ‘gift’ compulsion, and what was a random impulse, and fewer and fewer of his compulsions were bearing fruit—no mango-related pun intended—or at least none that we could see. But even if he could resist the occasional impulse, he doesn’t dare, just in case doing so might have a disastrous effect on someone else. He’d even started seeing a psychiatrist, but the only thing the doc was able to do for him was prescribe sleeping and anxiety medications.

Even with the meds, or maybe in part because of them, Jimmy was in even worse shape for driving than usual, so it was a damn good thing he’d called me. Once he was ready, I fired up his microbus, and we drove the forty minutes into Kansas City, where we spent the next few hours, stopping at grocery and convenience stores. At each stop, Jimmy pulled case after case of diet soda off the shelves with increasing degrees of agitation. When he found one that “felt right,” he was able to relax for just a few minutes before he started being drawn to the next case. A few places we had to talk them into letting Jimmy go examine the back stock. You’d think they’d refuse, or at least get a little annoyed, but Jimmy has this—I don’t know—this childlike, innocent vulnerability about him that’s hard to say no to. He lives in kind of a different world than most people do, and sort of expects everybody to be as nice and as helpful as he tries to be. It’s hard to say no to Jimmy without feeling like an asshole.

Sometime around ten o’clock that night, Jimmy guided us onto I-35 North, and we waited for the compulsion to tell us where to stop. We finally found the “right” convenience store about halfway to Des Moines, and I hit the men’s room while Jimmy perused the displays. I finished just in time to see Jimmy explode out of the store waving his arms and screaming, “No! Not that one! I need that one!”

He was charging straight at a grizzly bear in denim and plaid flannel. Okay, not an actual bear, but if a real grizzly ever met this guy it’d pee its fur, scream like a twelve-year-old girl at a Jonas Brothers concert, and run crying for its mommy. Man-bear had—you guessed it—a case of diet soda under one arm. Jimmy slammed into him at full speed, and cans flew everywhere.

Man-bear’s face went from surprise to ugly(er). He pulled back a fist the size of my head, and before I could get there Jimmy was flying backwards to land on the blacktop. Man-bear dropped the soda and took a step forward.

“Don’t hurt him,” I hollered. Okay, it was a little late for that.

“You want some, too?” Man-bear said, and I froze. I wasn’t just afraid he was going to beat me up; I was afraid he was going to eat me.

Now, I’m not the world’s bravest guy, but I do think pretty fast when the alternative is getting turned into hamburger. “No, he’s my little brother,” I lied, “I-I take care of him.” It was the best I could come up with. Hey, I said I think fast, not that I do it particularly well.

“Doin’ a pretty crappy job of it.”

“I know,” I didn’t have to fake anguish. Imminent death has that effect on me, especially when it’s mine. “ Look at him, though,” I pointed to where Jimmy was crawling around muttering to himself and gathering up the fallen cans while blood dripped from his nose to the blacktop. “You can see he’s not, y’know, quite all there in the head, can’t you? It’s not his fault.”

The trucker scowled at Jimmy, then at me. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s a little, uh... touched, you know? He gets it in his head that something—like one particular case of soda—is important, and he thinks something bad is going to happen if he doesn’t get it.” Well, that much was true.

I spread out my hands in appeal. “Look, I’ll pay for the soda. Hell, I’ll buy you ten cases.” Man-bear was silent. “C’mon, man, do you have a brother?”

Man-bear looked at Jimmy again and nodded slowly. He sniffed, then in a wilted growl said, “Keep your money. Tell him I ain’t gonna hurt him no more.”

While I stood gaping, Man-bear pulled a grocery bag from the cab of his truck, got down on all fours, and started gathering up the cans along with Jimmy. It took me probably half a minute or so to pick up my jaw enough to pitch in myself. Man-bear even got a cold pack from the cooler behind his seat for Jimmy’s face, and before he got back into his rig, shook Jimmy’s and my hands and said that while he wasn’t going to give any details, we’d changed his life.

Once Bruce’s rig was out of sight and we were back in the Microbus, Jimmy grinned at me, split lip, bloody nose, and all. “Alex, you were brill—”

And for the second time that day, Jimmy got punched in the face. Some things simply have to be done.

“Ow. What was that for?”

I glared at him, trying to ignore the fact that I felt like a total ass for hitting him. “I felt compelled, okay?” I started the car and pointed us back toward Lawrence. “I’m getting worried about you, man.”

“Yes, I could sense the concern in your loving punch.”

“Sorry about that, but are you nuts? That could have gone a lot worse than a punch in the face.”

“Two punches,” he said.

“Okay, two punches. I said I was sorry. But man, that has got to be the craziest thing you’ve ever done, and I’ve seen you do some crazy shit. Did you see the size of that guy? He’d give Mount Everest a Napoleon complex. We could have ended up in the hospital. Or jail. Or both. Hell, maybe even the morgue. Did you even stop to think we could have just politely offered to buy the soda from him instead of trying to tackle him?”

Jimmy’s face went slack. He stared at me for a few seconds, then hung his head. When he spoke, he sounded even more tired and beaten up than he looked. “I was so caught up in...” He looked back up at me. “You really do take care of me, Alex. And I don’t say thank you enough, but you never complain, and then tonight I almost got you… I’m sorry, Alex. It’s just… This is a bad one.”

I very carefully didn’t look at him. “Just think next time, okay?” I threw in some Ramones to cut short the Hallmark moment, and we cruised along to Blitzkrieg Bop.

About halfway through I Wanna Be Sedated, Jimmy turned off the music. “Hey, Alex? If we changed that guy’s life like he said, this diet soda thing is starting to play out, right?”

“Looks like. I just think it could have been handled differently.”

Jimmy shook his head. “I know, but if it’s starting to play out, my ‘gift’ or whatever should stop poking at me, or at least ease off a little, but it’s getting worse. And there are all those other cases.”

“Jimmy, I—”

“This so-called ‘gift’ pretty much runs my life, Alex, and it’s getting worse, and I can’t control it. I never wanted it to begin with. What if it gets one of us killed someday?”

I didn’t have an answer. When we got back to his place I was going to hang around to make sure he was okay, but he said he’d put me in harm’s way enough for one weekend. There wasn’t much I could do except make him promise to call me if he needed me.

#

My phone woke me a little before three a.m. the next night, which would have been fine if it were a supermodel calling to profess her undying love, but that, I decided, was an unlikely scenario, and stuck my head under the pillow to wait for the ringing to stop.

It didn’t.

“I have a hammer,” I yelled, “and I’m not afraid to use it.” Apparently the phone was unafraid of percussive maintenance. I tracked it to the pile of laundry under which it had made its rebel lair, and flipped it open. “Please state the nature of your emergency.”

“Alex! I’m glad you’re up.” Jimmy sounded like an auctioneer who’d been up all night mainlining double-espressos. “I dialed you like, nine times. Are you busy?”

“No, I was just going through the yellow pages trying to find a re-education camp for wayward cell phones. Look, it’s three AM, and you don’t sound like a buxom supermodel.”

“That has never been my aspiration. You said to call if I needed you. And I do. So I am. It’s the soda thing.”

I squeezed the bridge of my nose and censored myself. I had told him to call. “Okay, what do you need?”

“I know how to make it stop. Gotta get one more case and get to this little spring in the Flint Hills. About a hundred and fifty miles. Don’t trust myself to drive that far.” He giggled and switched to a bad falsetto. “Help us, Obi Wan. You’re our only hope.”

“You can’t play the princess-in-distress card, Jimmy. First, it’s not fair, and second, you know I’m already in.” If he didn’t trust himself to drive, I sure as hell didn’t, especially when he sounded that out of it.

Half an hour later Jimmy lurched in and knocked (in that order) dressed much like “The Dude,” from The Big Liebowski, only Jimmy’s bathrobe was fuchsia. He banged his shin on the coffee table, but barely seemed to notice. His nose and lip were still swollen, and his eyes were spider-webbed with red, but he was practically vibrating with nervous energy.

“You look like crap,” I said. “Did you sleep at all?”

“Can’t sleep. Gotta go. Here.” He dug into the pockets of his robe and handed me a printed-out map along with the keys to his old VW min-bus.

“Okay,” I said, “but shouldn’t you be wearing pants?”

He looked down at himself and frowned. “What’s wrong with swimming trunks?”

“Dude.”

“Okay, okay. But we gotta hurry.” Jimmy’s a little smaller than I am, but I managed to find some clothes that didn’t fit him too badly. (I let the Cthulhu slippers slide. You have to pick your battles.)

Jimmy had a bunch of those big plastic bottles—the kind that go on top of home water coolers— filled with slightly brownish water and strapped together in the kiddie pool in the back of the mini-bus. “What the—”

“No time. I’ll explain on the way.”

By the time I had the mini-bus in gear he was already asleep, slumped against the passenger door. I knew how this worked, though. As soon as I stopped heading toward our destination he’d wake up frantic. Besides, I probably wouldn’t get anything coherent out of him until he’d napped, so I bit down on my curiosity.

He woke up about halfway there. “Take the next exit,” he said. “That’s where the last case is.”

I pulled off the highway. “You wanna fill me in now? And please tell me we’re not going to get our asses handed to us by a human grizzly again?”

He laughed, bouncing up and down on his seat. “No promises on that count, but I don’t think so. As for filling you in... Wait. Turn here.” We pulled into a service station with all its lights out. Jimmy opened his door.

“Dude, they’re closed.”

“Gonna check the hours on the door and see how long we have to wait.”

The station wouldn’t open for three more hours. “All right,” I said, “That’s plenty of time to fill me in, so spill.”

“I’ll warn you, it’s going to sound crazy. I’m going to sound crazy, but hear me out, okay?”

I said I would, and he continued. “You saw how I got earlier. I had to get some sleep before I finished this thing or I was going to fall apart. Or even worse, screw it up. But I couldn’t. I even took a sleeping pill, but all it did was make me spacey. I finally gave in around one and poured the soda into the kiddie pool.”

He paused and stared out the window. “Keep going,” I said, “You poured the soda into the swimming pool, and then what happened?”

He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “I started pouring, and there was this... face.”

“What, at the window? Somebody was watching you?”

“No, in the pool. A woman’s face, there in the soda.”

Now that topped the weirdometer, even for Jimmy. “Right. You’re sleep-deprived, and like you said, you were on sleeping pills. People see things.”

“Whatever. Anyway, it freaked me out,” he said.

“Understandably.”

He got quieter. “Her lips started moving. She was saying, ‘help me.’”

“Hang on—You know it wasn’t real, right? Unless... Is your ‘gift’ giving you visuals now?”

He didn’t seem to hear me. “What could I do?” he said. “The more I poured, the more of her there was, until there was this… this beautiful woman standing in the middle of the pool. She was real, Alex. She had sort of blue-tinted skin and long green hair, and she reached out of the pool and called me her hero and kissed me, and—Hey, what are you doing?”

“I’m starting the engine. And unless I hear something of the not-crazy variety come out of your mouth in the next five seconds I’m turning around.”

“Wait, Alex. Don’t freak out on me.��

“We’re way past that. Look, it’s probably just sleep deprivation combined with Ambien, but we gotta get you looked at.”

Jimmy grabbed my sleeve. Not like he was trying to pull my hand off the steering wheel, but just to emphasize his words. “Alex,” he said. “Please. I’m not crazy.”

“Maybe not, but something’s wrong. What kind of a friend would I be if I—”

“Okay, okay” he said, “Just for argument’s sake, let’s say I was hallucinating, and that it’s from not sleeping because of this compulsion. What’s the fastest way to fix that? The only way to fix it?”

I sighed. “Seeing it through.”

“So see this through with me, give me a day or two to catch up on sleep, and if you still think I’ve lost it, I’ll go to a doctor or whatever you want. I mean, come on, it’s a few hours of driving is all, and then we’re done with it, I promise. Deal?”

I rolled my eyes and climbed into the back to stretch out by the kiddie pool. “Damn it, Jimmy, there’d better be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.”

It only took a few minutes for me to doze off. I couldn’t have been asleep for long, though, when I woke to shrill ringing. Jimmy jumped into the driver’s seat, slammed the door, and started the engine. We threw gravel getting back on the road.

“What the—” I looked back at the service station. The front window was broken out. “Jimmy! What did you do?”

“I couldn’t wait. She can’t hold out much longer.”

I climbed toward the front. “That’s it. You’ve lost it, man. Pull over right now. If you pay for the damages they’ll probably let you off with probation.”

Jimmy’s voice was choked and he was blinking back tears. “You don’t understand. She’s dying. There weren’t any security cameras, and I left money on the counter to pay for the window. If I drive fast we won’t get caught.”

“We? I didn’t do anything except ride along with a crazy man!” I reached for the steering wheel, but we were already going fast enough that I’d probably flip us if I grabbed it. I got out my phone. “Pull over now or I’m calling the police.”

I wasn’t really going to. As far gone as he was, he might try to outrun them, and things would only get worse.

He called my bluff. “Go ahead. If you’re still my friend, though, wait until it’s over.”

There wasn’t much of an alternative. About an hour later Jimmy turned onto a dirt road. When we got to the end of it and bounced to a stop I grabbed the keys from the ignition.

“Help me with the bottles,” Jimmy said, “The spring is just a little ways off.” He unbuckled himself and moved toward the back. I grabbed his arm, and he looked me square in the face. I have never seen him so determined. “What are you going to do, Alex? Hit me again?”

Ouch. I let go, and Jimmy’s expression softened. “I know you think I’m crazy, but I can prove I’m not.”

He started pulling stoppers out of the water bottles. “I hope she’s up to this. She’s in pretty bad shape, or I’d have tried it earlier.”

I had to clench my jaw to keep from responding. Jimmy un-stoppered the last bottle and leaned over it murmuring. “I know,” he said, “But we have to prove to my friend that you’re real before he’ll help us get you home.” He turned to me. “She wants you to know that not all of this is her. Some of it’s just regular water and soda.”

“Great,” I said, “Tell her those bottles don’t make her butt look big. Honest.”

Jimmy scowled at me, and I was about to say something more when the water moved. Trickles from each bottle snaked up and joined to form a translucent face like in, what was that movie... The Abyss or something. It—correction, she—stuck out her tongue at me before turning to Jimmy with an expression of such adoration that it broke my heart. The sun was rising, and it glinted off of her in reds and golds. Jimmy touched her lips with his fingers and she kissed them, then lost cohesion and flowed back into her bottles.

All I could do was stare.

“Well,” Jimmy said, “Am I crazy?”

Either she was real, or Jimmy’s insanity was contagious. I preferred to believe the former. I had to work my mouth a bit before anything came out. There isn’t much to say when you witness the impossible. “What are we waiting for,” I growled, “Let’s get her home.”

We used the deflated kiddie pool as a sled where we could, and carried the bottles one by one over the rough spots until we reached the spring.

Jimmy finished filling me in on the way. The woman’s name was D’lahna, and she was a naiad, a water nymph. She’d been exploring “Overhill,” as she called it, when she somehow got stuck in a soda bottling plant. She wouldn’t have lasted much longer if not for Jimmy and his gift.

We poured first the bottles, then the final case of soda, into the spring, and D’lahna rose up out of it more beautiful than you can imagine. And very, very naked. I stood staring until Jimmy punched me in the arm. “Hey. Mine.”

“Sorry.” I averted my eyes. Kind of. Hey, she might have been my best friend’s girl, but she was gorgeous. I tried not to gape at her, and searched desperately for a way to cover the awkwardness. How do you make small talk with a mythological creature?

“So, uh...” I said, “Sorry about the whole thinking you were imaginary thing. Nice place you’ve got here. Love what you’ve done with it. Seems like a quiet neighborhood.”

D’lahna laughed. If you’ve never heard a nymph’s voice, I can’t really describe it to you except to say it sort of... sparkles. “Your friend is funny,” she said to Jimmy, then looked at me. “This isn’t where I live, Alex, but it will get us there.”

It took me a moment to process that. “Us?”

I turned to Jimmy, who had just stripped naked. (Now there’s a sight I hope to never see again.) He grinned at me. “I’m going with her,” he said.

“But you... She... You can’t...”

“It’s okay,” Jimmy put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be in touch.”

They offered to take me with them, but instead I watched as Jimmy took D’lahna’s hand and waded into the middle of the spring with her. They turned translucent and flowed into the water.

It was a long drive home, and I thought about the two of them all the way.

Two weeks later I turned on the kitchen faucet, and out came an invitation to Jimmy and D’lahna’s engagement party. They’ve already set me up with a date—a wood nymph friend of D’lahna’s who, Jimmy thinks, just might break my losing streak. He mentioned a possible job offer, too.

And guess what D'lahna's family's favorite fruit is? Yeah, at least now I know what to do with all those frozen mangoes.

[spotlightstory]

Don't Eat This

Oreos: Sugar, Palm Oil, Corn Syrup, High Fructose Corn Syrup... and a Bioengineered Food Ingredient. Not good for your body.

Studies show that high fructose corn syrup increases your appetite and promotes obesity more than regular sugar. “High fructose corn syrup also contributes to diabetes, inflammation, high triglycerides and something we call non-alcoholic fatty liver disease,” says Dr. Hyman, adding that it increases all the fat in the liver, which now affects over 90 million Americans.

“It can even cause fibrosis or what we call cirrhosis. In fact, sugar in our diet is now the major cause of liver failure and that makes sugar the leading cause of liver transplants,” he continues. Source

Palm oil is high in saturated fat, which may raise LDL cholesterol and increase the risk of cardiovascular disease. Some studies suggest palm oil could be linked to inflammation, certain cancer risks, and type 2 diabetes.

Large-scale conversion of tropical forests to oil palm plantations has a devastating impact on a huge number of plant and animal species. Oil palm production also leads to an increase in human-wildlife conflict as populations of large animals are squeezed into increasingly isolated fragments of natural habitat.

Coke Zero Sugar Oreo

Ingredients CARBONATED WATER, CARAMEL COLOR, NATURAL FLAVORS, PHOSPHORIC ACID, SODIUM BENZOATE (TO PROTECT TASTE), ACESULFAME POTASSIUM, SODIUM CITRATE, SODIUM CHLORIDE, ASPARTAME, CAFFEINE, SUCRALOSE.

Aspartame is a low-calorie artificial sweetener, which is approximately 200 times sweeter than sugar.

Some research suggests that aspartame increases the risk of:

certain types of cancer, including lymphoma, leukemia, urinary tract tumors, and neurological tumors.

type 2 diabetes.

preterm delivery.

toxicity in the kidneys.

toxic liver disease.

harmful changes to the salivary glands.

Sucralose is an artificial sweetener and sugar substitute. As the majority of ingested sucralose is not metabolized by the body, it adds very little food energy.

Some studies have shown that sucralose can change your gut microbiome by lowering the number of good bacteria by half. Research done on animals shows that sucralose can also increase inflammation in the body. Over time, inflammation can lead to problems like obesity and diabetes. Source

Target had an endcap of Coke-flavored Oreos and Oreo-flavored Coke

[alaskan-wallflower]

Okay random Hc but after the new special I think Kyle despises soda. Like he is an avid water drinker and will not put anything else in his body (aside from juice when his blood glucose drops). This man HATES diet soda and anytime someone around him drinks one he’ll say something like “You know that’ll give you cancer, right?” “That aspartame is more addictive than actual sugar.” Like you will not hear the end of it. He will go on rants about over processed food as well, I can picture him being a bit of a health nut and just having the most repulsed face at whatever monstrosity Cartman puts together.

Okay that’s it

yeah. yeah, i can see this.

i used to be the same way-i still absolutely despise soda because i hate the way it feels going down and such. so i can kinda relate to that aspect at least. but i can kinda see him being all ‘yOu kNow WhAt KiNds Of CheMicAls ArE iN thAt RigHt?’ just cus he’s annoying like that lol

[poet-slenderman]

Fake sugar

Bubbly soda and sugary sweets,

Honeycomb candies and mango treats,

Maple syrup rain from sugar crystal skies,

With a chocolate chip dusk and vanilla sunrise.

Saccharin speech falls from your aspartame lips,

While sugar free cotton candy clogs my senses,

You feed me artificial sweetness beyond compare,

And as you fill me up with this empty sweet, I become addicted.

Gone are those days of veggies and meat,

All I can taste is your never ending sugar sweet!

You grow and indulge in my sweet tooth and it was far too late,

By the time I could see what you would take!

Diet soda and fake sugar sweets,

Acesulfame candies and sucralose treats,

Neotame syrup from unsweetened skies,

Fake sugar dusk and fake sugar sunrise.

Darling Aconite, your poison is creeping into my veins,

Dear Hemlock, it's time that I shall take the reins,

Lovely Nightshade, playing games with my heart,

Beautiful Foxglove, my turn to play a game.

Ticks crawling around the room with buzz-buzzing flies,

Alas old love, your reaper is near,

Too soon for your demise,

Too quick of a death for you,

For a sack of carrion reeking of sucralose lies.

Empty cans of soda and not a single sweet,

Without candied love, without any treats,

Gloomy water rain from dark cloudy skies,

With a lonely dusk and a freeing sunrise.

Splendor. I know you're reading this. Yes, I wrote this for you. Are you going to stop talking about romance yet. I will continue talking about toxic relationships if you don't.

[sapphicshock]

People You Want To Get To Know Better ✨

_____

Thanks @theplasticwalmartbag for the tag! 💕

_____

Favorite song: Currently it’s Granite by Sleep Token but anything and everything by Tove Lo, especially Call on Me. 🔥

Favorite color: I adore a nice teal blue-green and a nice gray! 🩵🩶

Currently Watching: Been trying to watch Jujutsu Kaisen for months now but I’ve been very busy. Try to keep up with weekly Critical Role episodes though! 🎲

Last Movie: Barbie in theatres. It was amazing and I cried a lot. 💖

Spicy, Sweet or Savory: Honestly I love all three, but probably savory the most. 😋

Relationship Status: I’m happily married to @asterkosmos7! I’ve been with her for a little over 10 years now and we’re still very in love and have three beautiful cat babies together. 🥰

Current Obsession: I’m always hyperfixated on Pokémon, but lately I’ve been trying to learn more about cool vtubers (Nijisanji, Hololive, some indie, etc.) and Baldur’s Gate 3! Bought BG3 but haven’t gotten too far past the character creation. 😅

I’ve also starting live streaming and I’m obsessed!! I’ve wanted to try it for years since YouTube and later on Twitch became a thing but have always had terrible internet service where we live so it wasn’t possible. Recently we got better service though and I can do it and it’s been so fun! Can’t wait to stream more when my day job allows me time. ⚡️

Last Thing I Googled: I looked up the Epic Games Store to download the latest free game(s) of the week. 👾

_____

No sweat if you don’t wanna do it, but we’ve been mutuals for a while and I’m too shy to initiate a proper conversation and make friends... 🫣

@radicalgecko

@bongwaterlemonade

@memeramera

@toobadchadlytime

@none-sex-left-gay

@lenaylias

@morningstarwhipped

@spicy-salmon

@pleaseimtootired

@ohmygod-zu-you-suck

@vappy

@teruterusky

@barricadeb0i

@porygonpraiser

@aspartame-addict

And please anyone else who sees this and would like to do it! 😎

[carouselcometh]

Not that I would ever be in this situation, but if I was a celebrity and I was approached by Pepsi to do a Pepsi commercial, a la Britney Spears or Kylie Minogue, I would simply decline. My heart beats in time for that of Diet Coke. I’m addicted to that combination of aspartame and caffeine

[pissditching]

oh so i don't have an aspartame addiction i just like it when drinks have texture cause the minute i started buying 6 packs of sparkling water i haven't wanted diet coke at all ok this is good information to have. i've been 20 for 5 hours and we're already making big self discoveries.

[shivasdarknight]

the state of food rn is genuinely really harrowing, and just as like. a small example that exist in this larger problem

i was looking for an alternative to the energy drinks i usually get at my local coffee place, so obvs i go looking at the Big Name Ones

everything had sucralose and/or aspartame in it with the exception of the very basic rockstar and all forms of redbull. this "no real sugar" thing has gone to ridiculous lengths where i can't find anything that doesn't have it in it

as for why this is: sucralose was recently found to be a genotoxin! as in it literally destroys your dna! and it's the most used and most popular artificial sweetener and it's next to impossible to avoid it! on the other hand, there's aspartame which is currently being reevaluated by organizations like the WHO and several cancer advocacy groups as there have been connections discovered that would make it a carcinogen. important to note that the FDA has pushed back against this, but they're also notoriously profit driven and not always to be trusted.

a lot of the food that's on the market is carrying a carcinogen or a genotoxin. theres added sweeteners and other sugars to get you addicted to it. something as simple as buying food is either shelling out a lot of money for somewhat healthier stuff, or it's buying what you can afford and it's slowly killing you in ways you did not account for due to the prevalence of chemicals that they assured were Totally Safe.

sources:

[fairycosmos]

literally coca cola is so good it has naur right being that unhealthy..... they need to make a healthier HEALTHIER version of coke

i knowwwwwww when will science people get on thisssssssssss </3 like they can do sooo many amazing things i know they can do this for the bloggers and insomniacs and aspartame addicts

[stayfrostyordont]

dumb ask as requested- top 5 favorite beverages and why

Ooo good question

1. Diet coke (previously dr pepper)- (i am addicted to aspartame)

2. Tea- i love tea, so it has to be confined to one category or else it would be the whole list. Black tea, green tea, chai, and matcha especially

3. Fireball- i have issues

4. Monster Rehab Peach Tea- I'm not a huge fan of monster but if i could drink this specific one all day every day without having a heart attack i would

5. Dr. Pepper- used to be be my all time fav however diet coke has taken over

Currently drinking iced black tea and dr pepper simulatiously

[kasaneteto]

i wasnt gonna go out for my bigulp until AFTER i worked on art today but the demons inside me are screaming for aspartame so time to march my gay ass down to the 711 where they will make fun of me for being addicted to soda. so it FUCKING goes!!!!!!!!!!!

[bloodenjoyer]

Diet Coke is like water to me I drink it room temperature and it cures all my aliments - which is most likely my caffeine withdrawal headache or something due to my caffeine withdrawal headache

it’s sooooo so good idgaf i think im probably addicted to the aspartame bc i def don’t have a caffeine addiction but i constantly crave diet coke …

[conkreetmonkey]

I think I need some actual relaxation. Not the false relaxation produced by addictive, dopamine-teasing sim games, but like an actual massage or something. I'm tired of this false relaxation, this aftertastey, artificial aspartame shit. I want the real deal. I need an hour in a hot tub, that's what I need.