Wednesday morning, I went for a sweaty, hot, sticky run with some folks through downtown Raleigh.  I’m friendly with the Raleigh Ambassadors of Rock, the name bestowed on the Ambassadors of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon in Raleigh.  So when one of the Ambassadors stopped by my office and mentioned they’d be running the course for the half for next year as a recon-type thing, I was in!  Any excuse to actually RUN with living, breathing people is one I try to make – sometimes I welcome a run by myself, but for the most part, especially in the summer when I’m not particularly motivated, I love being with other folks.

We started out a little fast for me – consistently hitting just over 8-minute miles, which I was able to maintain for about three miles before I started to fall behind.  At one point, my vision short of shifted, and I realized that my blood sugar was dropping, and that immediately following the run, I would need to grab something to bump the sugar up.

I didn’t really tell any of the folks I was running with because the minute you mention the words blood and sugar together, people start freaking out and running around with their arms flailing like muppets, which I experienced once when I actually fainted in front of a class and came to with folks just standing over me, staring in horror, and not really doing a whole lot of anything else.

But I digress…

So following the run, I immediately hit the gas station, grabbed some change from the bottom dusty part of my purse, and hobbled into the gas station to find the source of all things life when your sugar is low, and popped a can of Coke as soon as I got myself back to the car.

It was really sweet.  Like…really sweet.  And within minutes, I started to feel myself perk up enough to make my way to my couch.  I flipped the can over, and was shocked at what I read.

The can was one of those 16-oz cans, the tall ones, and I’d managed to get a few swallows in, when I discovered what the “nutrition” in one of those bad boys was like.

The can listed the calories as being over 200 – but that part in itself wasn’t what kinda tweaked me out a little bit – it was the sugar and carbs. In each 16-oz can, there were 53ish grams of sugar, and like 57 ish grams of carbs, which is a pretty decent chunk of carb consumption that you really need to be doing each day.

Mind = blown.

Not that I’m inherently against fun things to eat.  I actually really enjoy sweets and have to reel myself in from going ham on the York Peppermint Patties, but 53g of sugar in anything is really overkill.  And the thought that folks are consuming this along with their meal is really sort of scary.  I mean, I just want everyone to be able to flip over the can, and realize that Coke is being a little unreasonable with their ingredients.

It also made me a little sad.  Back in the day, prior to me conscious of what I put into my mouth, I was a Coke-drinker, and and I no idea what it was that I was consuming.  And it makes me really sad that there might still be old Cheris running around and doing what I did.

What is (or was) your guilty pleasure?