Don’t ask me how or why but earlier this summer I started going steady with Coke Zero. I knew it wasn’t good for me but I figured an occasional small-sized bottle would be okay. Plus I liked the flavor and took faint comfort in the fact that at least it didn’t have sugar. But two or three weeks ago I started to feel a kind of weird chemical sensation in my bloodstream, and I realized that I wasn’t sleeping all that well because of this. My body sensed that it was something in the Coke Zero. Maybe the potassium benzoate, which is used to protect the flavor of the beverage. Or the acesulfame potassium. In any event I suddenly said to myself “what the hell are you doing?” and threw all the Coke Zero out. Here’s a piece by health writer Ted Elliott that looks a little too forgivingly at the ingredients.