Worse, diet soda can trick your body into releasing insulin to process glucose, but since there isn't any glucose, you glucose level falls off, or you develop insulin resistance. It's better to drink less regular soda than a lot of diet soda.

Subjectively, yes it does. But guess what - if you switch to diet, after a while (a while being something like a year) you'll end up thinking the regular Coke is bitter or otherwise off.

Quite a few things are acquired tastes. We like coffee and beer, after all, and both taste vile by default.

How easy it is to switch to diet depends a bit on how much you drink. For a time I was drinking a bunch of coke, so switching to diet was initially very rough, but also went quickly, maybe a couple weeks. Having free access to diet coke at work sped things along.

Now if I drink regular US coke (the HFCS kind) it feels like I'm drinking syrup, and my mouth feels like it's coated in glue.

That's because of the sweeteners they use, aspartame and ace K. There are a lot of low calorie sweeteners that have a completely different flavor profile

I have not been able to find anything with sweeteners in it (of any kind) that doesn't taste bad.

I used to feel that way, but for me Coke Zero tricks my brain just enough not to notice. I don't drink it very often, but it's pretty indistinguishable for me otherwise.

My sweetener at home is erythritol, stevia and monk fruit together and it tastes pretty good

disclaimer: I like stevia, it doesn't taste "bitter" to me

I like the initial flavour of Stevia, but the aftertaste is bad. I'm not sure if I'd call it bitter - it's definitely offputting though.

> Diet soda tastes bad.

I believed that until I was in a relationship with a diabetic, and so we'd have Diet Coke in the fridge rather than regular. It takes a bit of time to get used to it, but you do.

My preferred option these days is to drink neither :)

In absolute terms I guess everyone could get used to a bad flavour with enough exposure (something I theorise happens with beer, as it's actually disgusting. You just learn to drink it), but why would you? It doesn't make sense with beer and it doesn't make sense with sweeteners.