I have one small harmless addiction (well only one, if you don’t count my other addictions, like prescription painkillers, sedatives and a compulsive need for order!).
FROZEN COKES!!!*
Which is one of the weirdest things for someone like me to crave. Mostly because I don’t generally like sweet things… I do not like cake (mud cake is the worst – sticks to the roof of your mouth), I do not like most biscuits (especially chocolate or cream biscuits), I like very few types of lollies/candy (like Fruit Tingles or raspberry liquorice bullets) and I tend to easily steer clear of sweet ciders, riesling, moscato and most dessert wines. I watch people fight or do deals over who gets the last Tim Tam or see kids’ eyes light up over a bowl of Malteesers or look on in amusement at my sister in law’s eyes rolling into the back of her head in ecstasy over a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup! But I just don’t get it. If I have a bit of chocolate, I’m immediately looking for a glass of water to wash it down. Someone once gave me a box of chocolates for my birthday in January a few years back that stayed in the cupboard until August… sitting there taunting the rest of the family, because they were my ‘birthday chocolates’ and not to be opened by anyone but me! Something to do with chocolate etiquette? There’s also a ‘thing’ about eating the last bit of the block apparently…? But I digress.
Additionally I don’t drink Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero or any of the Pepsi-Cola family. I also don’t like chocolate, I don’t like coffee and I’ll only reluctantly have a V or similar if I’m in desperate need to wake myself up… so I’m not big on caffeine either. But every summer or whenever I go on a road trip, I really want Frozen Coke. Problem is of course, they’re nothing but a pure sugar hit which is something that a chick with PCOS and insulin resistance really should be avoiding where ever possible.
Anyway in an effort to control my abnormal urges, I went and looked up the ‘nutritional information’, and I use the term lightly in regards to these particular products, and was less then impressed at what I found…
McDonalds:
Hungry Jacks:
7 Eleven Cola Slurpee:
So, either way you look at it, it’s all bad. Sugar, sugar and more sugar, and zero nutrition and I really shouldn’t go anywhere near them. EVER. But then I heard about the 7-11 Mango Zilched… which claims to have hardly any sugar in it at all! And I thought, somewhat skeptically, ‘Awesome! Must try!’ And so we did. And they weren’t bad but they weren’t great. They were however, freezing cold and lasted for half an hour thus fulfilling the major requirements of the frozen slushie drink quite adequately.
But, since my Dad passed away from MND in 2007 and lots of studies indicate that excessive consumption of artificial sweetners (especially aspartame) can lead to the onset of diseases like MS and MND, there’s no way I will knowingly consume something that has aspartame in it given I may have a genetic predisposition to such things anyway. Naturally, I went looking for the nutritional information on the Slurpee website and found nothing… nada… zilch (yeah bad pun, sorry). Undeterred, I emailed the Slurpee ‘Contact Us’ people to ask them ‘hey what’s in your orangey slurry goo that tastes very little like mango and considerably more like excessively sweet citrusy stuff?’ and I got the following response.
Hey Borys,
Thanks for your question.
The sweeteners contained in the Slurpee Zilched are: 968 – Erythritol; and 955 – Sucralose. Both sweeteners are commonly found in many diet soft drinks, gums and ice creams available in Australia. Both are approved as safe by Australia’s Food Standards authority.
Hope this helps!
Cheers
Team Slurpee
Why yes, Team Slurpee. Yes it does. So while no artificial nonsense in your food is best, sucralose and erythiritol are way lesser evils when compared to aspartame and shit like that. Still, with the bright orange 110 and 102, I wouldn’t go giving it to a kid with known food colouring issues. So now I feel like I can have my bi-weekly Frozen Slurpee guilt free knowing I’m not going to be assisting the early onset type two diabetes that most PCOS sufferers have to look forward to anyway! 🙂 And with plenty of time to slurp away over the rest of this summer too!
*For the record, I’m still not entirely convinced any Cokes are harmed in the making of said Frozen Cokes and have yet to see any evidence to support actual Coke content.