Do you drink Diet Coke?
Have you heard of the new Diet Coke Plus, supplemented with vitamins and minerals? Actually, none of the ingredients in diet colas are even trying to be good for you. So writes Bob Morris of the New York Times.
Millions of people drink Diet Coke, Jolt and similar fare – lots of it – despite knowing it’s not good for them. That leads to nagging and flare-ups, especially among friends and relatives.
Here’s a delightful statement of each side of this debate:
“In this age of body-as-temple Puritanism, Diet Coke flies in the face of all nutritional accountability. Its ingredients…are discussed as if they were Chernobyl runoff. So it has a polarizing effect that makes people either deride it as toxic or adore it as elixir from Aspartame, the goddess of the very thin.
“Ask people if they drink Diet coke, and they’ll either look at you as if you were asking if they drank gasoline or they’ll tell you they drink six cans a day, including at breakfast.” -New York Times, 5.20.07
So what’s a health-conscious missionary type – with health supplements to market – do with their Diet-Coke-(you-name-it) guzzling friends?
Now I am not going to change the world all at once but slowly with little information at a time. So I don’t tell people how awful they are eating or drinking. I don’t believe there is one person without one vice or two. Instead I find what they are doing that is healthy and encourage that. People like to be encouraged especially if they are also going to hear about something that they might need to change or offered something to make them more healthy to buy.
Boost someone’s ego before you bash them over the head with your health nut ideas,
Nancy Carlson
perfectmombusiness.com
Great post, Nancy — “Boost someone’s ego before you bash them over the head with your health nut ideas” — love it.
When talking to someone addicted to Diet Coke, we might ask if they have any concerns about what’s in it, or are they just thrilled with the fact it exists for them? 🙂 If they have no concerns, end of subject. If they are worried at all, we might ask what they are doing to help minimize the effect on their body. Again, we may get to chat further….or not. In any case, we’re avoiding bashing ’em, huh? Whew, good thing, for sure.
Dianne
I would have to say my one vice is microwave popcorn. I no longer use the microwave for anything that goes into my body and have stopped buying the bagged microwave popcorn but I have a “thing” for popcorn cooked in a glass container designed for popcorn and real organic butter drizzled over the top and tossed!
NO on the diet coke, period. It’s no surprise that they would try to put a few vitamins and minerals in it to seduce people into thinking it could actually benefit them in some way just like Propel water slips sucralose in there without disclosing it clearly on the label as Splenda! I’m shocked at how many items in the grocery stores are tainted with sucralose/Splenda masquerading as “healthy” choices! It’s really a “buyer beware” market nowadays.
I use to literally be the 6 cans a day diet coke drinker. I was having side effects with headaches.
One of the side effects for me after getting on a nutritional program was to no longer want diet coke…. too sweet.
Now that I am off the diet coke, I do feel much better and only have a sprit or cherry limeade from Sonic once in a while.
Because I know others that did not give up their cola of choice, it must not affect everyone the same way, but for me a heavy fog was lifted and I felt sooo much better!
A distributor can only tell someone who asks if a product will help with a specfic vice like that to just try it as everyone has a different chemistry. They will just have to see how it makes them feel personally.
If the product is not made to even deal with their vice at all, I would tell them that I haven’t heard of that benefit, but the product does benefit each person differently and it will not hurt to find out in what way it might help them.
Brenda Bunney
http://MLMSuccessBunney.com
brendab@brightok.net
Like Nancy said, everybody has a vice or two, and I think there are more people who eat poorly than those who eat properly.
I market Aloe Vera juice and supplements. I find it particularly important to market to those ‘diet Coke (among other things) guzzling friends … people who are not “health nuts” and who eat poorly. Those who eat properly are one step ahead of the game.
I market myself somewhere in between the two. In this world we live we don’t really know what to believe. Diet Coke with vitamins ??? yeah, right. But I’m sure there are people who will think, “wow … diet Coke has vitamins so now I can drink all I want”!
It seems to work better for me to be ‘among’ the majority. For example, my story is, I drink Aloe Vera juice (or whatever detox juice you might drink) because I believe it helps rid my body of those harmful toxins that are in most all of the foods (especially junk foods) we eat today.
I have found that once they start drinking the juice and start feeling better, they might attend a seminar on health. It becomes a domino reaction, the change occurs naturally, and it was their choice.
Venetta
http://www.aloecare4u.blogspot.com
I can so totally relate to everything that was said here. I do tend to ask people if they have heard the reports and articles that have been released recently about apartame and sucralose. I used to be a Diet Coke person and drank a lot of it at times. Now I try to substitute my healthy energy drink instead since it has none of that “junk” in it. I encourage others to try it a time or two to see how it makes them feel and many times it becomes their drink of choice too.
What I do with my un-health concious friends and family is take a few long deep breaths and let them go.
I tried without success to help my siblings and parents understand the virtues of our whole food supplements. It WAS tough not to take it personally, but they stuck their collective noses up in the air at them. This is after I gave them some product. I wasn’t trying to get them to buy it.
Fast forward 2 years. My Dad has cancer big-time and my sister suddenly thinks anti-oxidants are a great idea.
Hello.
Fact is – they just weren’t ready. Improving the diet wasn’t on their radar screen at the time.
And, so it is with most people. Some eventually get around to discovering that how well they took care of themselves is beginning to show.
Even Micheal Moore says he discovered those funny things called fruits and veggies while making the movie ‘Sicko.’
Dave C
My adult son, soon to be 25, has been living with cancer for the past 5 years. When he was first diagnosed, one of my goals was to get him to change his eating habits from unhealthy to healthy. And eliminating the daily sodas from his diet was on the top of my list! But getting HIM to see that it would benefit him was the challenge.
One of the things I learned about all the negatives of drinking soda is that the sugars in soda make the skin break out in blemishes, and I knew that THAT mattered a great deal to my son. I helped him to see how drinking fresh water was so much better for his body and his skin. I encouraged him to experiment with the results of clearer skin by giving up soda for a little while and watch what happens. He saw his skin clear up and then saw that when he drank soda again, the breakouts occured.
Appealing to my son’s vanity is what made him want to make the change — because then it became ‘his idea’ once he realized he had some control over the skin blemishes. He’s been soda-free for over 4 years and now he drinks water that’s been specially PH balanced, which keeps all his cells healthier.
I find that if I’ve done my homework about a particular health subject and then have the opportunity (when the subject comes up) to show an individual (usually warm market or referrals)how it (whichever product I am marketing) can benefit them PERSONALLY, often they will be willing to at least try something out by purchasing and using for a few months.
And of course I use Kim’s method for cold market and to ask for referrals from warm market contacts(Example: I market a product for people who are concerned about how drinking soda affects their body, like I used to be…)
But it all boils down to whether or not the person we market to has a NEED for the product or a good reason to make a positive change in their life. Engaging them in a conversation on the subject is vital. If they’re clearly NOT interested, I stop discussing it (Find those for whom this is the right thing to be doing, right now…).
If this is just not the right time for them then maybe the subject will come up again down the road. They will make a change only when they are READY to do so, don’t you agree?
Karen O’Handley
http://www.pioneeringhealth.com