I just realized today that my favorite soda could have been causing problems with one of the medications I'm on...

Specifically Diet Squirt and Vytorin...

You see, one thing that I'm attached to in life is my diet soda. I always tell my wife (who thinks I drink to much soda), some people smoke, some drink alcohol... I drink diet soda...

I'm very attached to my Diet Squirt. I used to drink it when I was younger (I'm Diabetic, so I always drank diet for as long as I can remember), but Diet Squirt soon disappeared from store shelves. Over the years I would occasionally think about it, but NEVER saw it on store shelves. Until one day a couple years ago, and I've been hooked ever since. You will RARELY see any other form of soda in my fridge...

My wife thinks I drink way to much, but I tell her with no calories, carbs, or fat, there are much worse things I could be hooked on...

At any rate I was re-reading the warnings on my medication bottle of Vytorin. I noticed the "Do Not Drink Grapefruit Juice Or Eat Grapefruit" sticker once again. Having been staring at the 8 or so spent cans of Diet Squirt sitting on my nightstand a few minutes earlier, it all of a sudden clicked in my head: Diet Squirt contains grapefruit juice!!!

I was quickly panicked, and skipped my normal morning can on the way to work. My wife said I should stop drinking the soda, I on the other hand said I should stop taking the medication...

So when I arrived at work this morning I began a little research. After searching on warnings, they pretty much all said not to exceed a quart of grapefruit juice per day. They did NOT say to avoid it completely... So the first thing I thought was: How much grapefruit juice do I actually get out of my can o' Diet Squirt, so I did a little math...

1 can contains "less than 1% juice". Ingredients say less than 2% of "the following" with Grapefruit Juice Concentrate being listed first.

Each can is 12 FL OZ.
So for the sake of argument, we'll round the juice percent to a solid 1%...

1% of 12 FL OZ = 3.54882356 milliliters.
Round up to 4 milliliters...

1 quart = 946.35295 milliliters
Round down to 946 milliliters...

946 divided by 4 = 236.5
Round down to 236...

So this would mean I would need to drink MORE than 236 cans to exceed 1 quart of juice. Keep in mind that we rounded in the safest direction in each case, so the actual number of cans is higher...

However I realized shortly after this that the ingredients list grapefruit juice CONCENTRATE. I thought what if the 1% juice was actually 1% juice concentrate? So, seeing that concentrate is usually mixed with 3 parts water, which would mean concentrate represents 4 parts juice (3 parts water + 1 part concentrate = 4 parts total)...

236 divided by 4 = 59.

In the end, after rounding everything to be on the extra safe side, it turns out that I would need to drink at the very least an excess of 59 cans of Diet Squirt a day to exceed 1 quart of grapefruit juice a day. As much as I love my Diet Squirt, I can safely say even I do not drink that many cans A WEEK! So I think I'm OK...