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Comment by LitFan | Hacker News Reader

>The most famous illustration of that is the Pepsi paradox: in blind tastings, Pepsi is quasi-systematically preferred, but Coke continues to be the absolute bestseller. It’s the triumph of branding over taste, as the mere presence of brand labels leads people to switch their opinion.

This isn't entirely due to branding. Pepsi is preferred during sip tests but Coke is preferred when drinking a whole can[0].

[0]https://www.wideopeneats.com/difference-coke-pepsi/ *This article does refer to the branding "New coke" and "Coca Cola Classic", but the branding was to ensure adoption for an actual change to the drink they had already made.

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I'm honestly baffled that people can't tell the difference between coke and pepsi in a double blind test. this was a common science fair experiment at my middle school, and whenever i participated I could easily tell the difference. often restaurants will serve Pepsi when you order coke if that's all they have. I consistently notice this as well (as confirmed by the branding on the soda fountain). Pepsi has a different flavor and has significantly more sugar than coke, so I'm not sure what people are missing.

Perhaps you consistently notice this because you drink one (or the other, or both) regularly and your sense of taste is calibrated. Anecdotally, I drink soda very infrequently, and can't tell the difference; both just taste "extremely sweet."

Coke has a much greater acidic, carbonated "bite." Should be obvious after a few moment's instruction.

I can tell the difference between Coke, Pepsi, Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, fountain or bottle or can, and often which fast food establishment the coke came from if it's fountain. There's nothing about special about it, anymore than telling the difference between tuna and toro. After a bit of experience, it's not challenging.

This, and it has nothing to do with drinking so much about one brand. Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Pepsi, Pepsi Lite, Dr Pepper, Or even some Sainsbury ( UK Supermarket ) Branded Coke. They are God Damn Different.

Not only that, Coke from UK, US, HK, Japan and Mexico taste different as well. Big Bottle 1.5+L taste different to 330ml can, along with Glass Bottled Coke.

And I don't drink them often. May be once every few months or a year.

Note: I never tasted the US version of Pepsi though, so may be they are similar.

I'm pretty sure I couldn't tell the difference due to never drinking soda. But then it is unlikely that I would even ever order one.

Smart move. Quit about 10 years. Whats wrong with tea or water? Sadly when you here stories about schools serving pizza and coke at their cafeteria... No pizza is not a vegetables.

Pizza is made out of cheese, wheat, and tomatoes. Wheat is from a plant. Cheese is basically a plant because it is made out of 100% grass (with some processing). Tomatoes are obviously a vegetable. As you can see, pizza is almost 100% vegetable.

I feel that the HN community should be firmly on the side of Tomatoes are obviously a fruit https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/is-a-tomato-a-frui...

Do we really expect cafeteria pizza to have its cheese sourced from grass fed cows?

Well, does the (flimsy) reasoning break down if the cow is fed corn instead? Corn is still a vegetable.

Even adding animal-based products like bone meal should be fine, since the bones are made out of processed vegetables.

Now you are thinking like a politician!

Of course. A school cafeteria would never give students subpar food.

I mean, Zea mays is panicoideae, and thus very much a grass..

The senses are subtle, especially taste and smell. They also seem to vary more between people than the other senses. I drink soda pretty regularly and don't consider either very sweet, but I can't distinguish them.

Coke also has a certain harshness when from a can or bottle. I absolutely love Coke, but do not mind getting pepsi. I will always prefer coke.

It's really not that surprising, a lot of people don't drink either regularly, and there's nothing closer in taste to a can of coke than a can of Pepsi.

John Sculley, then CEO of Pepsi, failed a blind taste test in front of reporters.

Could that have been intentional? I'm completely speculating, but a public belief that 'they both taste the same' could benefit the challenger at the expense of the market leader.

I can tell the difference between different bottled water but not Pepsi and Coke.

But that might be because I rarely drink either.

For those of you who think you can't tell the difference, or it's very "subtle", are you properly inhaling the drink? Make sure you inhale the fumes slowly and with agitation of the drink in your mouth, and exhale slowly while the drink covers your tongue. I also suggest doing this with chilled bottle or can; fountain beverages add a lot of randomness to the mix.

Human variance being what it is, I'm sure the result will still be indistinguishable to some people, but I also think there's a lot of people who will suddenly be able to tell the difference quite strongly after this exercise. They're certainly in the same "genre" of drink, but quite substantially different. After this exercise you may also understand why Coke is strongly favored for mixed drink applications. (I mean, to the extent that either is favored. Still, "Rum and Coke" is a thing; "Rum and Pepsi", well, it may get you what you ask for, but you may get a bit of a "look" from the bartender.)

(I was raised fairly typically midwest American, and the injunction to keep your mouth closed while eating was rigorously enforced. I have often wondered if the resulting non-inhalation of the food's volatiles has contributed to the generally poor quality of American cuisine at the time, and its slow progress since then. I've also wondered if "don't inhale your food!", which figuratively means not to eat it too rapidly, also has the literal meaning resonate in our brains and prevent us from doing the good and proper kind of inhalation.)

I usually see these concepts applied to wine. But sure, it's an important insight that they apply much more broadly.

Wine was my gateway to these ideas, yes, because otherwise wine is just somewhat strongly flavored grape juice in a lot of cases. But then I noticed it was something you need to do for a lot of things.

I presume this is common knowledge on the one hand, but on the other, I've literally never encountered anyone talking about it in a general food context. (YMMV of course.) One of the best kept secrets of "common" knowledge?

Sorta... Malcom Gladwell didn't really pinpoint anything. He asked an ex-Pepsi product developer.

>>The difficulty with interpreting the Pepsi Challenge findings begins with the fact that they were based on what the industry calls a sip test or a CLT (central location test). Tasters don’t drink the entire can. They take a sip from a cup of each of the brands being tested and then make their choice. Now suppose I were to ask you to test a soft drink a little differently. What if you were to take a case of the drink home and tell me what you think after a few weeks? Would that change your opinion? It turns out it would. Carol Dollard, who worked for Pepsi for many years in new-product development, says, “I’ve seen many times when the CLT will give you one result and the home-use test will give you the exact opposite. For example, in a CLT, consumers might taste three or four different products in a row, taking a sip or a couple sips of each. A sip is very different from sitting and drinking a whole beverage on your own. Sometimes a sip tastes good and a whole bottle doesn’t. That’s why home-use tests give you the best information. The user isn’t in an artificial setting. They are at home, sitting in front of the TV, and the way they feel in that situation is the most reflective of how they will behave when the product hits the market.”

>>Dollard says, for instance, that one of the biases in a sip test is toward sweetness: “If you only test in a sip test, consumers will like the sweeter product. But when they have to drink a whole bottle or can, that sweetness can get really overpowering or cloying.” Pepsi is sweeter than Coke, so right away it had a big advantage in a sip test. Pepsi is also characterized by a citrusy flavor burst, unlike the more raisiny-vanilla taste of Coke. But that burst tends to dissipate over the course of an entire can, and that is another reason Coke suffered by comparison. Pepsi, in short, is a drink built to shine in a sip test. Does this mean that the Pepsi Challenge was a fraud? Not at all. It just means that we have two different reactions to colas. We have one reaction after taking a sip, and we have another reaction after drinking a whole can. In order to make sense of people’s cola judgments, we need to first decide which of those two reactions most interests us.

Which is to say: essentially one guy's (informed) opinion which even he doesn't seem to commit to that strongly.

This is then followed by about two pages talking about branding/sensation-transference concluding with the punch line no one ever drinks Coca-Cola blind

The difference in flavor isn't really considered cut and dry by either of them and Gladwell focuses on branding.

Thank you for the insight - I haven't read Blink, I've just come across this online and in discussions with friends.

The author of the article I linked paints the anecdote you've cited as Gladwell's "research". I had thought it was more exhaustive than that.

Yeah this is a very idiosyncratic pet peeve of mine. Wikipedia's pepsi taste test article also cites Blink with the same sense of authority.

Gladwell is an entertainment writer who picks facts and writes interesting stories.

None of them should be taken as factual; he cherry picks and often writers stories well after the source material has been disproven.

For example, Gottman's marriage research in blink that could predict divorce with extreme success was an overfit model without a validation set that didn't generalize well.

Anecdotally, I find Coke branded soft drinks to use more "spice" for their flavors, while Pepsi branded ones (excluding Dr Pepper) to just load up on sugar. You can do the same comparison with Mug brand root beer versus Barq's. Mug is just caramel colored sugar, while Barq's seems to be "spicy"

Perhaps what you are noticing is bitterness from caffeine.

Nah, Coke has significantly more "bite" (boy it's hard to come up with the right term to describe it) than Pepsi does. I don't think there's a significant difference in caffeine content between the two.

I'm honestly baffled that there are people who have trouble telling the two apart...

In Barq's vs. Mug -- quite true. Haven't had either in probably 10 years but Barq's "bite" is the caffeine.

Only 22 mg of caffeine in a can of barqs. You sure that is what you are tasting?

Ever tasted raw caffeine? Yeah I am sure.

It's not bitter, it's literally like dashing something from the spice cupboard on your tongue.

It's 'spice' for me as well - I can always tell Coke from Pepsi because of the 'spice' flavor.

Same, I always figure it's the leaf they use.

Coke is still the only major soft drink to use coca leaves (with the psychoactive components chemically removed).

>while Pepsi branded ones (excluding Dr Pepper)

Dr Pepper is independent, neither a part of Pepsico or CocaCola Company. Part of their (successful) marketing campaign was making everybody believe that there are only two choices when it comes to soft drink: coke or pepsi. Dr Pepper (and other extinct brands) got left out of the public consciousness this way

Though, on a regional basis, Dr Pepper gets bottled and distributed with one of the big two.

Dr Pepper isn't entirely independent - it's a part of Keurig Dr Pepper, and is associated with 33 other bottled beverages including schweppes, canada dry, yoohoo and Snapple

Back in the 90s when I used to watch ads, Dr Pepper had an advertising campaign in the UK which had besuited scientists examining, and declaring "we can you one thing, it is NOT a cola"

Clearly advertising works, this discussion is proof of it.

In a restaurant or cafe tap water is never advertised unless it is being charged for. This applies to all restaurants, cafes and bars. But you are familiar with the product as you have taps with water in them at home. You don't have to guess the name.

Now imagine if all cafes had big signs with 'free water' advertising the tap water product and rival carbonated beverages were hidden from view out the back. How would you know what the magic word was to be able to get one of these things if the staff just offered you the choice of a glass of tap water or a cup full of tap water?

Then, if the carbonated beverages had to be plain labelled, with no fancy graphics or slogans? What if they just had a big sticker on them warning that they caused death by diabetes? With extra warnings about how second hand cola can kill too? With extra extra warnings of how the sugar in the beverages caused cancer and made you impotent?

Would you still drink the stuff if you were addicted to Coke/Pepsi and had these extra hurdles to obtain the product?

Er, every restaurant I've been to in years has greeted my newly seated table with "Still, sparkling, or tap water?" (This is in the northeastern USA.)

I don't drink the sugar or caloric versions, only the diet, but Diet Pepsi taste makes me almost ill. Diet Coke however is fine and I actually like it. The taste difference to me of these 2 are substantial. I don't know about the caloric versions though.

Different artificial sweeteners seem to affect people very differently. I quite like Coke, but Coke Zero is one of the more vile things I've ever drunk. Yet I also know people who claim they cannot tell the difference between Coke and Coke Zero. Pepsi Max on the other hand I have no trouble drinking.

I like all of it except Diet Pepsi for some reason (Pepsi Max is maybe my favorite), and even then sometimes I like Diet Pepsi. Occasionally I'll get one that tastes quite bitter, yet another time it will taste like a Pepsi.

This doesn't happen to me with any other diet drinks, not sure why this one isn't "consistent"- I guess maybe because Diet Pepsi I have more often from fountains instead of containers, since it's usually a backup when a restaurant has no other diet options

I can tell the difference between Coke and Coke Zero, after having limited myself to mainly Coke Zero over the past few years to limit calorie intake (in the carbonated beverage arena - most of the time I am drinking water).

When I first tried Coke Zero, I found it better than Diet Coke, and closer in flavor to regular Coke. For me, Diet Coke has that strange Nutrasweet after-taste, which I have never liked.

I didn't find that with Coke Zero when I first tried it, seeking something that was nominally "zero-calorie" without having the bad aftertaste I associated with "diet" beverages (and other foods for that matter).

Now, though, when I drink a regular Coke (or worse, a Pepsi), I find it extremely overly sweet. I can still drink other "regular" colas, but they're not my go-to beverage choices any longer.

I do wonder how Jolt Cola would taste to me now; probably absolutely vile or something (I've also found that Grape Crush - which was already ultra-sweet - is almost unbearable to drink from a sweetness perspective).

That's fascinating, thanks for sharing, had never heard about the whole can test.

I think it is the cocaine residue from the coca leaves that people prefer.

Coke products are the only ones with actual extract from the coca plant. It is grandfathered in. They used to contain actual cocaine. They remove that, but they still contain other things from the coca plant.

The very name refers to the coca plant they based the drink on. In contrast, Pepsi and "generic" brands are essentially sugar water. This is likely why Coke had that campaign for a time: "Coke -- the real thing."

People drink coffee primarily for the caffeine. This is generally acknowledged. People joke about being unable to focus because they haven't had their coffee yet, etc.

So, we drink coffee for some meaningful active ingredient. I see no reason to believe we drink soda "for the flavor" and not for the actual active ingredients. Coke has active ingredients that other brands lack.

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