Hey folks, Pratham here.
Welcome back to Paradox Weekly, a Masters' Union newsletter, where we break down the ideas, trends, and contradictions shaping business today.
Nearly everyone I know (myself included) reaches for a diet coke when our pizza or biryani arrives.
It almost feels like it's “extra guilt” to have the full-sugar one on top of the meal despite it having a lot more calories than normal Coke.
Then in April, we stopped being able to find diet coke anywhere.
This happened across Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune and Delhi, because of an aluminium can shortage.
People hoarded and even celebrated Diet Coke parties.
The Cult of Diet Coke
The internet called it the "candemic", because for most of us who drank Diet Coke once a day had its daily ritual taken away overnight.
But that’s what's interesting, all of us are here to swap out Diet Coke with sugar (which works) but it’s not really helping with your “Diet”.
In 2023, the WHO advised against using the artificial sweeteners found in diet and zero-sugar drinks as a way to lose weight.
Its review found no meaningful long-term benefit for reducing body fat in adults or children, and pointed to a possible increase in the risk of type 2 diabetes.
We were also drinking more of the diet stuff than ever, doubled in a year to ₹700 crore.
More sweetness, fewer calories, increased hunger.
That's today's paradox.
Sweet taste is a promise of calories to your body as it braces and lines up the hormones that end in fullness.
Sucralose (sweetener) is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, so the promise is enormous, and then nothing arrives, and the body goes looking for the energy it was owed.
An earlier trial of 74 adults found the women ate more at a buffet after the diet drink than after the sugary one.
Feed 120 healthy people sweetener for two weeks and their bodies get worse at handling sugar.
The drink you ordered to eat less is the reason you ate more.
People are not stupid.
The swap feels obviously right, which is exactly why a whole country lost it when the cans ran out.
India never gave up its sweet tooth but just found a substitute to keep it.
Sugar in every chai, mithai at every festival, and now a sugar-free version of each, so the habit never has to change but the guilt does.
That permission is the most profitable thing a food company ever sold.
Regular Coke barely moved while Coca-Cola Zero Sugar grew 14%, and Coke and Pepsi now push ₹10 zero-sugar packs at every counter to pull in the next buyer.
Sugar Free stopped being a diabetic's medicine a long time ago.
It is now a lifestyle buy for the calorie-conscious and the fitness crowd, just dieters buying absolution one pink sachet at a time, in a category Zydus owns almost end to end at 96%.
The most profitable customer a diet brand has is the one who drinks it for years and never gets thinner.
The craving is the second order effect.
The industry has a defence because in short trials, people who swap sugar for sweetener do lose a little weight for a while plus the chemistry is mostly safe.
The WHO's cancer arm called aspartame "possibly carcinogenic" in 2023, then kept it cleared at up to 9 to 14 cans a day.
But the promise on the can was about it helping with weight loss (at least why you bought it), but you only ended up wanting to consume more calories because of it.
To be fair, there is real good here too.
For diabetics it is genuinely useful, and the WHO’s own warning leaves them out, because a sweetener lets them have something sweet without spiking their blood sugar.
Cutting Sugar Without Giving Up Taste
I’m not saying it’s not helpful or one shouldn’t consume it.
The goal of this is to share the complete picture because the habits formed out of “diet” or “zero calorie sweetener” makes us believe this only has good to it which isn’t the case especially for no-diabetics trying to lose weight.
When the cans vanished, nobody was grieving for a weight-loss tool, because it was never doing that job.
Diet coke has become a habit which is what created such a large outcry.
Now that the stock is back, I’m sure you order the Zero to make up for the meal, feel virtuous for an hour, and reach for the next one a little hungrier than before.
That is the product working exactly as designed.
Hit reply: do you order diet coke to lose weight or because it’s a habit to consume with every meal?
I read every email.
Until next week,
Pratham