Vice Is Bad for a Reason

alvinwoolf

By BOB MORRIS
Published: May 20, 2007

I was reaching for a bottle of Diet Coke in the supermarket the other day when a new kind caught my eye: Diet Coke Plus, supplemented with vitamins and minerals.

“This is hilarious,” I said as I pointed it out to the shopper next to me.

“Isn’t there enough stuff in Diet Coke already?” she said.

Indeed. And none of those ingredients is actually trying to be good for you.

In this age of body-as-temple Puritanism, Diet Coke flies in the face of all nutritional accountability. Its ingredients, although as safe as those in any sodas, are discussed as if they were Chernobyl runoff. So it has a polarizing effect that makes people either deride it as toxic or adore it as elixir from Aspartame, the goddess of the very thin.

Ask people if they drink Diet Coke, and they’ll either look at you as if you were asking if they drank gasoline or they’ll tell you they drink six cans a day, including at breakfast.

A highly public roster of Diet-Coke-alites includes Harvey Weinstein, Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Elton John drinks it at concerts. Victoria Beckham is reported in a recent issue of Newsweek to have said she drinks it all the time because she can’t stand the taste of water.

Although diet soda can never be technically addictive, it is the one vice people can say they have that isn’t really a vice. So why would anyone want to undermine Diet Coke’s appeal by giving it any redeeming value? It’s bad. People who drink it like to think they’re bad. That’s good, especially when there’s no sugar involved.

Diet Coke Plus with vitamins indeed! What will be next, Absolut-Plus?

I guess it shouldn’t come as such a surprise. After all, we are living at a time when we just can’t leave bad enough alone. Whole wheat pasta and whole grain Froot Loops. Lactose-free reduced-fat Swiss cheese. Sugar-free ice cream. Alcohol-free beer. Trans-fat-free French fries. Yoga classes instead of expense-account lunches. Cruise ships are supplanting gluttony and hedonism with “edu-tainment” classes for self-improvement.

And along with candy for its turndown service, Ritz-Carlton plans to offer a book of quality short fiction. Can’t we just have a chocolate? Must we be given the burden of lyrical, mind-improving literature when all we want is sugar and cable TV?

Of course, now that chocolate is under study as a cough suppressant and a cholesterol reducer (along with red wine and hard liquor), bad isn’t what it used to be.

Cicero said, “It is a great thing to know our vices.” But how can you be sure what they really are anymore? Slightly overweight people live longer. Gambling seniors are healthier. Taking vitamins turns out to be useless compared with eating fresh fruits and vegetables.

But after that E. coli outbreak, are you brave enough to eat your spinach?

Studies also suggest that many diet soda drinkers weigh more, not less, than others because they compensate by eating more sugar and other fattening foods. That would explain why Mr. Clinton was seen drinking his Diet Cokes at McDonald’s.

Me? I come to my appreciation late in life, as my waist expands. But Ira, my spouse, is a veteran aficionado who brings a hard-core obsession to Diet Coke drinking.

To hear him order one is to hear the urgency of a sophisticated martini drinker at cocktail hour. He can tell the difference between the kind from bottles or fountains. He is clear about his preference for Coca Light, the European Diet Coke that he’d like to ship home.

“It just tastes better over there,” he said, “probably because it has chemicals that are worse for you.” Anne Slowey, an editor at Elle, still recalls the best she ever had, near the Great Wall of China. “If I want the Diet Coke of my dreams, I have to go to Beijing,” she told me. But Diet Coke Plus? It rubs her the wrong way, as it does many.

“I just don’t want someone mixing vitamins in with my vice,” she said.

Especially if you can taste them. The other day, Ira popped open his first can of the stuff. Ptooey.

“I don’t care for the aftertaste,” he said. “It’s like having a sweater on my tongue.” With that he ceremoniously poured it down the drain.

Maybe all those vitamins will do the plumbing some good.

E-mail: Bobmorris@nytimes.com