People keep asking whether you can have diet coke on the ketogenic diet and keep getting some bizzare opinions on the web. So here are some actual facts that might help you see the true picture.

YES, YOU CAN HAVE DIET COKE WHILE ON THE KETOGENIC DIET.
Why? SIMPLE. THE CARB CONTENT OF DIET COKE IS LESS THAN 1gm.

NO, YOU CAN’T HAVE IT ON INTERMITTENT FASTING PHASES WHILE ON A KETOGENIC INTERMITTENT FASTING DIET.
WHY? THE MASSIVE INSULIN SPIKE CAUSED BY THE ARTIFICIAL SWEETNER ASPARTAME (which is in diet coke) WILL VOID THE PURPOSE OF YOUR FASTING PERIOD.

ADDRESSING THE ASPARTAME SCARE:
A lot many people are scared of the hullabaloo about aspartame being a carcinogenic agent, well, it is best avoided for that reason… but so is all food packed in plastic. But for a person who cant go off sweetness cold-turkey, it is best to get there step by step and therefore aspartame/stevia become necessary evils.

One actually valid reason to avoid aspartame is that it kills your gut bacteria leading to digestion and nutrition assimilation issues. This is fixable though by doing a good cycle of probiotics or including raw curd in your diet on a daily basis. A pharmaceutical approach of dealing with this issue is to use VSL 3 for a month every 3 months to re-populate the healthy gut bacteria. Unlike smoking, the ‘harmful’ effects of aspartame are quite reversible.
So as I said, its upto you to choose your evils.

About the very specific question that can you have diet coke on the ketogenic diet…. the simple answer is YES YOU CAN.

-Pushkaraj S Shirke
Director, Project Battlefit