Looking for the secret to a better workout? It’s probably already in your kitchen

 from the Irish Times.

For two years, Steph Gaudreau gave up her daily cup of coffee. She switched to large mugs of herbal tea – not because caffeine was affecting her sleep or making her anxious, but to gain an edge in cross-country mountain bike racing.

Hoping to enhance the effect of caffeine as a performance aid, Gaudreau, who lives in San Diego, drank a cup of coffee on race day as she warmed up. Once that pre-race caffeine boost hit, Gaudreau, now a nutritional therapy practitioner and strength coach, said she felt a sense of euphoria, which helped her feel focused and mentally prepared for her race. The strategy paid off. In 2010, she took first place in a regional amateur biking race called the Kenda Cup.

Caffeine is the most widely consumed psychoactive substance in the world and one of the best studied. Scientists have been looking at caffeine’s effect on athletics since the 1900s. Although there is still some disagreement as to the exact mechanism by which caffeine consumption affects exercise performance, and whether taking a break from it until game day can give you an edge, scientists agree that a cup of coffee before working out can improve performance, whether you’re playing for the NBA or just running through your neighbourhood.

is Diet Coke addictive?

 

some thoughts stemmed from this article.

Diet Coke as with all fizzy drinks have a unique taste and sensory properties.

As humans, once we like it, we are getting used to these sensory properties because our mind remembers the pleasure (hedonic score it is called in Sensory Science), and we are seeking this pleasure day in day out.

For coke, though, things are a bit more complicated.

From a food science point of you, we don't know the exact composition of coke since this is an in-house secret recipe that has been kept in house since coke was "invented".

Coke contains caffeine and a cola extract.

Both are addictive!

Caffeine is a powerful alkaloid that it is highly addictive.

However, there are alternatives to break the bad habit of drinking coke.

The people (like the one on the Irish Times story) need to seek an alternative source of caffeine and here Food Science can help them. Coffee and Tea contain caffeine and these two drinks can act as substitutes for caffeine. We need to highlight here that coffee and tea are much more healthy than diet coke or coke.

Therefore, there is a way to break the vicious cycle of addiction to Coke.

One more thing: the artificial sweeteners that "sugar-free" drinks contain are usually aspartame and another one.

Aspartame is a toxic sweetener and we need to keep an eye on humans' intake of this compound.

Ioannis Zabetakis