American Warmonger

The Coke – Pepsi Challenge Goes Splenda

A new artificial sweetener has been making its way into your soda bottles. Something called Splenda is making its way into the main stream of diet soda drinking. For a while now it could be found in Crystal Lite sodas and select specialty brands, but the majors, Coke and Pepsi have stayed away. Well, this month all that has changed. Pepsi One and Diet Coke now have Spenda based varieties.

So lets start with what this means.

Previous versions of Diet Coke and Pepsi used Aspartame. Aspartame is a known cancer-causing agent. Cancer is not good. I’ve heard it is a great diet, but it can kill you, and that would be bad. Above death it also brings into play a popular dietary trend: Atkins and the South Beach diet. Both of these diets require little to no carbohydrate intake.

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Well, what does this have to do with diet soda then? Well, even though Aspartame contains no calories your body recognizes it as a carbohydrate-like substance and you will have a harder time reaching what is known as ketosis. Ketosis is the change where you stop processing the sugar coming into your body and you start to consume your body fat. This is what makes these two diets so miraculous.

So now that we have a basic idea of why Spenda, let me explain why me. I am a hardcore diet soda junkie. I work twelve-hour night shifts and refuse to go to coffee. I drink a lot of soda. As I sit here I am looking at the empty 2 liter bottle of Pepsi One with Spenda that I started about six hours ago. Today I didn’t drink that much. If calculations are correct with what I normally drink of the Aspartame tainted diet stuff I should have acquired cancer last year. (Just to clarify, no, I don’t have cancer.)

Now that we have come to the conclusion that by the amount I consume I should be a relative expert in the field of soda taste-testing we can get down to the verdict of both sodas.

Diet Coke with Splenda

I have drunk Diet Coke as my primary soda for several years now. I actually liked the taste. Trying this one was a moment of hope for me. Alas, I was let down. I was hoping the flavor would not change or move towards what some call “the hard stuff” or Classic Coke. Unfortunately for me they went the other way. To compare this to another soda I would have to put it on par somewhere between Pepsi and Diet Pepsi. If that’s your thing then this drink is for you. If not, you may want to start looking for a bottle of something else.

Something to note is that although it went away from what I was expecting it wasn’t horribly bad. I’m not a fan of Pepsi, so it’s not for me. It might be for you.

Pepsi One with Splenda

This being the only Pepsi product I am fond of I was pretty happy. It’s like the Coke of the Pepsi family. It’s also a good idea to keep this product in mind when Pepsi runs better sales than Coke does. Anyone else out there notice the sale pattern? Luckily, I was not too disappointed with the new Pepsi One with Splenda. It was just slightly sweeter than the original, but by far less Pepsi-like than what Diet Coke with Spenda was. I would still go to the store and buy this product without thinking twice. Plus the two liter bottle has this cool black light effect for the Star Wars Episode III release so it looks snazzier than its contender.

The verdict on these two products

If you like Pepsi you will like the new Diet Coke with Splenda. If you like the old Diet Coke and can handle a bit of variation then by all means switch to Pepsi One with Splenda. You could almost say that these products switched sides. But don’t take my word for it, taste test them for yourself.

Posted by aakaakaak at May 26, 2005 04:01 AM