"It's just a sugar dump"
HELLO??
Did you read what I posted?
I drink DIET sodas.
NO candy, because there's no sugar, where there's no sugar, there are no carbohydrates, where there are no carbohydrates there are no calories.
And yes, soda certainly does hydrate you. Maybe not as well as pure water, but diet soda has a positive water content effect on the body.
Diet soda, by volume, is 99.965% (or so I've read) WATER.