Sensing the arrival of the Northwest’s early spring, the annual tradition of turning away from some sinful temptation attracted me. Driven more by good-Catholic-girl guilt than by adherence to the Catholic faith with which I was raised, in light of the Lenten practice of “giving up” something sinful slash something “Bad,” I opted to forgo a something particularly “bad” for me, my running and – as it turns out – the world.
However sinful chocolate may taste – an easy, common choice to sacrifice, at least for the forty days and nights until the Easter Bunny comes a-hoppin’ through the yard with baskets full of brilliantly artificially-colored Robin’s Eggs chocolate covered malted milk balls, I hail its nutritive benefits. And my coffee addiction fires me up before workouts. So, from my running-unfriendly vices, I settled upon the task of cutting diet pop out of my life. Considering how easily reached a cheap can, bottle or bottomless cup is, the rate at which I’d been craving diet pop and its fizzy caffeine, cloying sweetness and salty bubbles increased since my rigorous high school runner days. I have given up diet pop for Lent, and perhaps for more than Lent.
Merits of the plethora of no-/low-calorie drinks that permeate the marketplace are debatable. But diet pop is undeniably as addicting as agribusiness and corporate soda giants will have it. Diet pop of the caffeinated variety became one of those neurotic Track Girl things in its apparent utility as a study, work, job-hunt, post-workout go-to substance. True, the ridiculously saccharine drink seems to satiate my sweet tooth and lacks the unhealthy high fructose corn syrup of the real thing; but I knew in my organic soul that it couldn’t be real enough to be Good for me.
Although Erica, the nutritionist at Columbia who I grew to adore during our appointments throughout my junior year, explained how my own conceptions of “Bad” and “Good” foods contributed to my then-disordered eating habits, she made an important concession and deemed diet “soda” (she spoke New York) “Bad” for me. What isn’t good for me – or any bone-density seeking or stress fracture prone human -- is phosphoric acid, as Erica, endocrinologists and other health professionals continusously explain. And that substance prevails in diet pop - especially the brown-colored kind. Furthermore, the health risks of aspartame and other artificial sweeteners included in these drinks are oft-touted by nutritionists and consumer groups.

Knowing all of this, why did I continue to consume such a Bad thing? Perhaps some of our fires are – or we assume they are – burning hot enough to metabolize any fuel. But now that I’ve sat down and thought about it, why we allow such blatantly artificial things into our bodies escapes reason. Especially as runners, so conscious of the temples that are our bodies and the sacred – if cultish – rites through which we carry these temples, do we question the Goodness of our fuel? Well, hold on. This brings me to a point pertinent to an audience much larger than the female runner: diet pop isn’t fuel.

It is neither wholesome nor nourishing. Even if you buy the “good source” of B vitamins, magnesium and other supplements touted by the Diet Coke Plus campaign, the product clearly demonstrates the “deluge of ingredients that were added by food marketers to promote their denatured product…[which are] additives extracted from their natural origins,” as Jason Epstein explains in The New York Review Of Books.

What are we eating and drinking? And, really, who knows? What effect these additives, let alone artificial substances, might have on our bodies is most likely yet to be determined. What I can tell you is that I’m not drinking diet pop. And I can feel that goodness in my bones.