Did you know there are 6 different ways to enjoy Diet Coke with added nutritional benefits? Diet Coke is building up its brand to include essential vitamins and minerals for the health-conscious Diet Coke lovers. Allow me to introduce you to Diet Coke Plus!

Diet Coke Plus offers automatic health benefits with the great taste Diet Coke drinkers have come to expect. Each serving provides 15% of the recommended daily intake (RDI) of niacin, and vitamins B6 and B12 and 10% of the RDI for zinc and magnesium. After a little investigating - the vitamins and minerals in Diet Coke Plus might truly payoff. Low magnesium is tied to increased diabetes risk and zinc plays a key role in glucose metabolism. Vitamins B6 and B12 assist in protecting the body from nerve damage from diabetes. In fact, vitamins B6 and B12 showed a positive influence on vibration perception and nerve conduction speed (NCV) in people with diabetic neuropathy.

Coca Cola realized that Diet Coke drinkers are increasingly looking for more beverage options. Coke decided to remove the guilt from the pleasure. With benefits including: increased glucose metabolism, reduction of diabetes risk, and enhanced nerve perception -- move over Verizon. Diet Coke Plus is asking - can you feel me now??

Whey Low is made of natural sugars like sucrose, fructose and lactose - not artificial ingredients. So it's unlikely your grandmother or your little brother will taste the difference. Even better is the fact that it should have substantially less impact on your blood sugar, for it barely reaches 25 on the glycemic index, whereas table sugar is a whopping 100.

This unique blend of all natural sugars is the ideal sugar replacement to control after-meal blood sugars, a definite concern for type 1, as well as type 2 diabetics. Use of Whey Low reduces insulin requirement, which eases stress on the beta cells (in type 2) and exogenous insulin requirements (in type 1). Whey Low also helps strengthen the immune system. The unabsorbed sugars of Whey Low, combined with starch, stimulate growth of healthful gut bacteria known as the prebiotic effect. This healthful gut bacteria has been shown in recent literature to stimulate the immune system.

Whey Low was developed by Lee R. Zehner. When his wife was diagnosed with diabetes in 1999 he wanted to come up with something that would allow her to continue her love for baking, without sacrificing control of her blood sugars. Whether you're whipping up frosting, baking cookies or searching for a new diabetes friendly coffee sweetener - Whey Low gives you an opportunity to indulge in your delights with significantly less impact on your sugars. Thanks to That's Fit for leading me on to this remarkable culinary crutch!

Stevia is a member of the daisy family, and Coca Cola teamed with Cargill to bring it onboard as a new sweetener in their family of products.

According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, Coca-Cola has filed 24 patent applications for the product, which has been tentatively named Rebiana. It plans to use the sweetener in some of its beverages. Stevia is only approved in the United States as a dietary supplement, not as a food additive. The extract is claimed to be the world's only all-natural sweetener with zero calories, zero carbohydrates and a zero glycemic index.

Extracts are said to have up to 300 times the sweetness of sugar. As a sweetener, Stevia's taste has a slower onset and longer duration than that of sugar. Lower-calorie sodas are made with artificial sweeteners such as saccharin, aspartame and sucralose. A recent report revealed that the US sweetener market is poised to increase 4% annually, to reach over $1 billion in 2010. A company that could offer a natural alternative to artificial sweeteners may have found a new sweet spot in this growing market.

Looking through a back-issue of Men's Health, I came across an interesting sidebar about the importance of scrutinizing nutritional labels on food. The gist of the small article was that, in most cases, people have a tendency to forget about serving size. For people with diabetes, this is of even greater importance, for a miscalculation can easily lead to a pretty wild swing in blood sugars.

Based on FDA standards, food manufacturers are required to provide calorie content and other nutritional information (e.g. Carbs, Protein, Fat, Sodium, etc.) for serving size on their labels, not the total amount in the package. So, it's very easy to not realize that you may be eating upwards as three or four times as many calories, carbs, etc. than you believe you are.

Here's a breakdown of the four foods highlighted in the issue of Men's Health. Granted, none are healthy in the first place, but you'll see that eating the product in its entirety is even worse than you may have thought.

KING-SIZE SNICKERS BAR: 170 serving size calories listed on label. 510 calories in entire bar.

20-OUNCE BOTTLE OF COCA-COLA: 100 serving size calories listed on label. 250 calories in entire bottle.

3.75-OUNCE BAG OF CHEX MIX: 130 serving size calories listed on label. 455 calories in entire package.

4-PACK KEEBLER SOFT BATCH COOKIES: 80 serving size calories listed on label. 320 calories in entire package.

Again, these foods are not exactly staples of a healthy diet to begin with, but the point is illustrated nonetheless. The same serving size issue applies for foods that people generally consider to be healthy, as well, so a serving size review is still warranted.

It's terribly unfair. Your sugar drops. You can feel it. The primitive instincts that do not qualify as being on our best behavior sometimes spill out in the subliminal advertising of a low sugar. When your blood sugar drops to hypoglycemic levels, your body goes into survival mode and only lends energy reserves for the nature of survival-unfortunately social graces and reason do not register high on that list.

dLife has put together a guide to help take the guesswork out of treating a low sugar. Too often we tend to over treat lows and end up on the other side of the 80/120 fence, It's difficult to master the twin deficits: too little sugar or too little insulin. But as Kerri (Six Until Me) points out-there is no such thing as a perfect diabetic...we can only do our best.

With that in mind, dLife suggests a few good ways to treat a low, without going too far. Their Rule of Thumb emphasis the 15 grams per 15 minutes rule. This simply means after consuming 15 grams of a fast acting carbohydrate, wait fifteen minutes before re-testing. If your levels are still too low, repeat and retest. Good sources of fast acting carbohydrates include: Glucose tablets (read packaging for equivalent of 15 grams carb) , sugar-sweetened soda (read packaging), 3 small Smarties rolls , 8 Sweet Tarts, or 1 Tablespoon of honey.