Coke and Pepsi are rejiggering their soda lines again with new semi-diet drinks.
The new drinks contain the standard high-fructose corn syrup that sweetens regular soda but in smaller amounts. The corn syrup is supplemented with Splenda, a no-calorie, no-carbohydrate sweetener made from sugar.
The result is a soda with fewer calories than regular but more than no-cal. For instance, Pepsi says a 12-ounce can of Edge has 20 grams each of sugar and carbohydrates, and 70 calories, compared with regular’s 41 grams each of sugar and carbohydrates, and 150 calories.
Actually, I remain quite happy with Pepsi One — but, being someone who drinks their sodas with plenty of ice, I find even totally zero-cal diet soda somewhat palatable. And it’s nice to be able to drink it and not have to count calories. Which the half-diet sodas won’t give me, because, really, 70 calories is still something you should pay attention to.
Now, if they did 20 calories, that might be pretty spiffy.
But I’m sure that’s coming. As surely as the sun rises and sets, soda companies are unable to figure out what to do in the vast waist-land (so to speak) between full-sugar sodas and diet sodas. I doubt this particular scheme will work (“It’s like all the dandilions, but half the size each!”), but I’m not particularly well-known for judging popular taste.
We’ll see.
(via BoingBoing)
As someone on Day 25 of a 30-day Coke fast, this is interesting to me. My question though is, if Splenda is so great, why not just use it full-force in Diet Coke?
As for giving up Coke for 30 days, I figured if Homer Simpson can give up beer for 30 days, I should be able to do the same with my drink of choice.
I haven’t drunk a “real” Coke (or any soft drink) since the beginning of March. Only Diet or 1-calorie.
I really don’t find that Splenda does that great a job, at least on its own — thus the use of “real” fructose in these half-diet drinks.
Just today I went out and got some Diet Coke with Lime, since I thought maybe that would be palatable to me. How wrong I was. I didn’t even finish a can of it. Ugh.
Hey, i tried it omg it was so0o good! but i want to remember the its a diet coke w/ lime thing song!! if u remember it e-mail me!