Soft drinks are popular for a reason: They’re bubbly, refreshing, and a quick solution for that midafternoon sweet tooth.
But they can also be full of empty calories that could sabotage your health goals. Soda without high-fructose corn syrup might be a better option.
Diet drinks with zero calories, such as Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, and Coke Zero, all contain artificial sweeteners instead of fructose.
Why Is the Fructose in Soda Bad for You?
High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a central ingredient in many traditional soft drinks, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Sprite. It’s what gives the drink a sweet taste, but it’s also what accounts for the majority of its calorie load.
Food producers create HFCS by adding enzymes to corn starch, which converts the glucose sugar into fructose.
Smaller servings of fructose naturally occur in fruits and some vegetables. In whole foods, nutrients like fiber, vitamins, and minerals balance out the sugar content.
However, in HFCS, the pure fructose provides no real health benefits. Cells can’t use fructose for energy, so the liver either converts it to glucose or triglycerides and fat.
Over time, this means it may contribute to health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure.
Foods containing HFCS are often highly processed, meaning they provide empty calories — excess energy without a good amount of accompanying vitamins, minerals, protein, fiber, and other nutrients.
A high-sugar diet can also put your body in a state of chronic inflammation, which may increase your risk of gastrointestinal (GI) issues, fatigue, reduced immune activity, mental health problems, and unintended weight changes.
Is Soda Without HFCS Actually Good for You?
Producers market certain types of HFCS-free soda as being healthier than their traditional counterparts.
While diet soda may have fewer calories, its actual benefits are unclear. They’re not always an ideal option because they don’t provide nutrients your body needs.
To find out whether your soda contains fructose, check the nutrition label and ingredients list. Manufacturers will list HFCS here. Also, if a soda lists zero calories, you can be sure it’s a soda without HFCS.
Diet sodas typically use artificial sweeteners to cut down on calories. No reliable human studies have shown that these sweeteners, such as aspartame, stevia, or sucralose, cause cancer or DNA damage in the amounts that humans usually consume them.
However, research reviews have linked diet sodas to a host of potentially negative effects to explore in further studies. These include:
Type 2 diabetes
Increased waist circumference
Heart issues
Issues with child brain and nervous system development
Adverse heart changes
Worsening retinal damage in people with diabetes
Kidney disease
Rheumatoid arthritis in females
Bone and tooth issues
Mental health issues
Cells that age faster
These findings suggest that the diet versions of soft drinks aren’t necessarily healthier than traditional soda beverages, although the exact risks aren’t clear.
Artificial sweeteners are intensely sweet. They produce a similar flavor to sugar with a fraction of the amount, meaning they can overstimulate the parts of the tongue that detect sweet flavors.
People who drink a lot of artificial sweeteners may start to find that less-sweet foods become less palatable or even unpleasant. This could push you away from healthy choices toward foods with little nutritional value that are artificially sweetened.
Plus, artificial sweeteners can trick the brain into detaching sweetness from consuming calories, potentially leading to cravings for sweets over nutritious food and weight gain.
Companies market certain sweeteners, such as stevia, as being healthy alternatives to sugar. But is stevia soda really that different from regular soda?
It doesn’t spike your blood sugar, and producers make it using the leaves of a tropical herb. In small quantities, stevia is likely fine, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has marked it as “generally regarded as safe.”
But very few long-term studies have examined stevia’s effects. Consume it in moderation rather than thinking of it as a miracle sugar substitute.
What Can You Drink Instead of Soda?
If you’re hoping to cut down on calories, sugar-free soda alternatives might be better for you than sodas with HFCS. But like most processed foods, it’s better to avoid consuming them in excess.
Alternatively, try quenching your thirst with the following:
If you’re after a burst of energy, drink coffee or tea without a whole bunch of sugar or creamer.
Freeze fruit, such as lemon, lime, cucumber, raspberries, strawberries, or mint, and add them to drinks for extra flavor.
If it’s the bubbles you’re after, drink seltzer water or sparkling water.
Try other beverages, like kombucha or coconut water.
Talk to your doctor if you’re concerned that diet soda could be having a negative effect on your health goals.
EDITORIAL SOURCES
Everyday Health follows strict sourcing guidelines to ensure the accuracy of its content, outlined in our editorial policy. We use only trustworthy sources, including peer-reviewed studies, board-certified medical experts, patients with lived experience, and information from top institutions.
Resources
What Is High Fructose Corn Syrup? And Why It’s Bad for You. Cleveland Clinic. April 1, 2025.
Kayli Anderson has over a decade of experience in nutrition, culinary education, and lifestyle medicine. She believes that eating well should be simple, pleasurable, and sustainable. Anderson has worked with clients from all walks of life, but she currently specializes in nutrition therapy and lifestyle medicine for women. She’s the founder of PlantBasedMavens.com, a hub for women to get evidence-based, practical, and woman-centered guidance on nutrition and cooking, hormone health, fertility, pregnancy, movement, mental well-being, nontoxic living, and more.
Anderson is board-certified in lifestyle medicine and serves as lead faculty of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine’s (ACLM) "Food as Medicine" course. She is past chair of the ACLM's registered dietitian member interest group, secretary of the women's health member interest group, and nutrition faculty for many of ACLM's other course offerings. She is the coauthor of the Plant-Based Nutrition Quick Start Guide and works with many of the leading organizations in nutrition and lifestyle medicine to develop nutrition content, recipes, and educational programs.
Anderson frequently speaks on the topics of women’s health and plant-based nutrition and has coauthored two lifestyle medicine textbooks, including the first one on women’s health, Improving Women's Health Across the Lifespan.
She received a master's degree in nutrition and physical performance and is certified as an exercise physiologist and intuitive eating counselor. She's a student of herbal medicine and women's integrative and functional medicine. She lives with her husband in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, where you’ll find her out on a trail or in her garden.
Sarah Ellis is a wellness and culture writer based in New York City whose work has been featured in Elite Daily, Greatist, and Rewire.News. She holds a Master's degree in Magazine Journalism from NYU, and she's always seeking out the newest fitness class or the latest green smoothie recipe to try. Find more of Sarah's work at her website: www.sarahabbottellis.com.
