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The quality has only decreased if you buy the "popular" kinds. Adams peanut butter is legit. Rice is rice. Get bread from a local bakery, eggs from a local farm, sliced meats from a local deli etc. Coke has a zero sugar Vanilla Coke and a zero sugar Sprite, both of which are great.
stares angrily in fresh produce
You do realize not everyone lives near local farms or has time in their day to go to them, right? You do realize fruits and veggies aren't only healthy, but delicious? You do realize that poorer people don't have much choice thanks to food deserts?
Capitalism destroys choices for the vast majority of people at its current stage. The free market destroys competition, the best thing capitalism supposedly had going for it. This destruction is by design. Monopoly was always the end game.
Exactly this. I luckily live in California, where much of the produce is locally grown and easily accessible even in many rural places. When I've traveled to other states, it's hit or miss on whether you can find fresh produce that isn't fucked up in some way if any at all. Some places might not have anything but a Dollar Tree or similar within a 50+ mile radius.
This presumes one has these options available. Yeah, there are local delis in the neighborhood, but they're slicing Boarshead, not their own cured meats. A bakery that actually bakes their own bread is a 90 minute round trip, while the local farmer's market is over an hour each way, one day a week to get eggs if you happen to be off that day. Also, closing that list out with Coke? I remember when I worked at a grocery store in high school, a 2L bottle was routinely on sale for less than a dollar. The same bottle is over $3 now.
coke has a zero sugar ...
and yet they're probably charging the same as full sugar, probably while adding sweeteners to the full sugar version?
I hate to break it to you but sweetened drinks aren't much better for you than sugary ones, but are way cheaper to produce, so this is just coke wanting to save money yet again
0 calories and no sugar drinks are way better for you
Water, unsweetened tea, unsweetened coffee, milk and countless other non-sweetened or minimally sweetened drinks are way better for you than any sweetened drink though.
"0 calorie" sweetened drinks are bad for you not because of their content but because eating sweet things increases your appetite as a reaction to sweet things being comparatively rare in nature, even if it's not sugar, so it's been proven that you're more likely to overeat and snack between meals (where the snacks are often also unhealthy) following consuming sweet drinks (I can't remember how long the effects stick around for but it's long enough that it'll stretch to your next meal, or make you want a snack before it), regardless of whether that food is sweet or not. Eating more also makes you lethargic so you're less likely to burn the extra calories.
The issue is this can be palmed off by the manufacturer as the fault of the people eating more, when fast food restaurants have anecdotally known this since forever and so include a sweet drink in their meal so that you want a bigger meal that you'll pay more for.
Even if you actively ensure that you're not letting it affect your appetite, for the majority of the general population that is not the case, so in practice they're close enough to being just as bad that it doesn't matter which you have
I still think it's way better than sweetened drinks, since it has the same downsides but obviously without the sugar content and calories.
But yeah I never thought about it increasing hunger, which indeed is bad. I personally don't drink soda, but for those who do it's an important thing to consider
I hate to say it, but Walmart's store brand stuff is still reasonably priced. It's not uncommon for it be half the price of the big name brands.