I have swapped coffee for soda and it works! Thanks Juan Valdez! #caffeine

I drank a lot of soda. Two liters at a time perhaps twice a week. 44oz. plus on other days. On a bad day, I might go over the 64 oz. threshold.

You'd think at that amount, it would be the caffeine that would frighten me. It made me shaky. The massive intake of CO2 made my insides churn. The acidity could be annoying. But none of those things made me walk away.

Aspartame did it. The current EU safe limit is 40 mg per kg of body weight a day, 50 mg per kg in the U.S. That translates to roughly 16 cans in the EU and 21 in the U.S. Sounds like a lot to most people, but a 2 liter bottle of soda is nearly 7 cans, which means I was pushing 10 a day. I got headaches and migraines when I wasn't on it.

The studies aren't there to show it is a serious health risk, but approaching the advisable limit as I was, coupled with the other negative effects, pushed to me to find something else.

And that something else is coffee. The caffeine is concentrated. The ingredients in the drink are known and simple. The milk is good for me, and the sweetener - Splenda - is much more powerful, so not only am I drinking less of it per oz of liquid, I am drinking less caffeinated liquid - nearly 80% less.

So far, so good.