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Comment by incrudible | Hacker News Reader

> Animals and humans prefer sugar over artificial sweeteners in experiments, and that could be because a specific gut sensor cell…

I have an alternative hypothesis: It is because sugar tastes better. In your mouth, on your tongue. Evolutionarily, this could be explained by sugar not being a calorically worthless synthetic compound that happens to taste sweet and may act as a laxative.

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Some of the newer formulations aren't half bad. Starting with Coke Zero, but now things like Dr Pepper and Pepsi have 'Zero' versions that are surprisingly good. I haven't dug into what they changed to make it work. The bottle of Pepsi Zero sitting in front of me says it still uses aspartame, but it doesn't have that bitter aftertaste I've come to associate with anything sweetened with aspartame.

I dislike it for a completely different reason: As a diabetic I've drank diet versions all my life. The taste difference between regular en the older diet versions is big enough to taste which comes in handy when you get a non descriptive beverage somewhere. With zero versions this advantage is (mostly) gone

Excuse my ignorance, but is there any kind of at-table testing you could do to determine whether it contains sugar? Almost like a dip-test?

I'm curious why virtually all soda labels I know of went to a new better tasting "zero" branding at exactly the same time

diet is now a bad word, zero isn’t, so now we’re all zero and not diet. obesity solved

My understanding was more that Coke Zero was originally targeted at men, who apparently viewed "diet" sodas as being for women. [0]

"We're positioning Coke Zero as a defender and celebrator of guy enjoyment."

It doesn't hurt that it's a chance to reformulate without people complaining about the change like "New Coke" (which was allegedly based on the Diet Coke of the time[1]) and so the Zero branding has likely expanded across the Coca-Cola lineup and other brands to expand that reach and introduce changes - and incidentally give them a chance to mess with their agreements with bottlers the same way as when they switched to high-fructose corn syrup [2] [3].

[0] https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/should-mens-products-fear-a-woman...

[1] https://casetext.com/case/coca-cola-bottling-co-v-coca-cola-...

[2] https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Real_Thing/jfGzHxGn...

[3] https://www.pressreader.com/usa/houston-chronicle-sunday/201...

It's weird, I prefer Diet Coke over Coke Zero. Unlike most Diet versions of sodas, Diet Coke is a different formula from regular Coke.

I don't find that weird - if I'm going to be drinking a coke (of whatever flavor), caffeine-free Diet Coke is my preference over regular/Zero. It is a different formula, even if it only comes down to the blend of sweeteners. Obviously I don't know the actual formulas, but each has a different blend of sweeteners based on the labels, and now I've added "The Real Thing" to my reading list. Different people prefer different blends, like the other commenters who prefer monkfruit, erythritol or stevia.

Diet Coke is the New Coke formula, but with artificial sweetener instead of sugar.

They use aspartame as well as acesulfame potassium which is 200x sweeter than sugar.

But they've used this combination for a long time as far as I know. So why the difference?

There was a period in which CCC experimented with sucralose instead of aspartame+acesulfame P, as I recall the "diet coke" got sucralose and the "coke zero" got aspartame+acesulfame P. But they went back to only one thing, and ditched the sucralose variant.

Lots of research and engineering. Diet coke has to taste like diet coke now, customers expect and want that taste specifically. Coke zero was developed from the ground up to try and taste like coke. It's very much a working soda that sees updates as food science technology improves to try and get it ever closer to standard coke taste. It was most recently reformulated in 2021 actually.

The Pepsi cherry zero sugar tastes exactly like the sugar version.

*for some people.

Artificial sweeteners are not sugar and only taste "exactly like" sugar to some percentage of the population. Hence all the different sweeteners. So count yourself lucky that pepsi zero does not taste awful to you.

First random article about it on google:

https://www.phillymag.com/be-well-philly/2013/08/22/study-fa...

Yep, it’s a bit like how cilantro tastes awful to some people and not others.

I haven't tried that, but I do regularly drink Pepsi Zero and I'm pretty happy with it. Enough that I switched from being a Coke Zero drinker.

More recently, I tried the Dr Pepper Zero and I like it very much as well. I have long been a fan of real Dr Pepper, but I just don't want that much sugar in my life. Diet Dr Pepper is gross, though I know people who like it. Dr Pepper Zero is close enough to the real thing that I don't feel like I'm missing out. I even inadvertently bought a pack of real Dr Pepper (the bottles are the same color!) a few months back and drank one without realizing I was drinking the full sugar version. That's quite a compliment to Snapple for their formula.

As an example, many sweeteners are known for their crappy aftertaste.

Stevia's weird herbal aftertaste makes it good for root beer, though.

I think monkfruit is the best alternative sweetener I've tasted.

I love it in cola. It’s a perfect fit, and I’m sad that it’s very rare to find stevia sweetened sugar-free cola (so far I found one in Germany, and they apparently decided that normal coke is not sweet enough…)

There's a new one called Reb M. Most stevia extracts are Reb A because it's found in high concentrations in Stevia. Reb M has less of an aftertaste and tastes more like sugar than Reb A. But it's expensive to produce because it's < 1% of the steviods in Stevia. 3 methods are changing the story here. (1) producing reb m through fermentation. Purecane does this and is available on Amazon right now. (2) breeding stevia plants that have higher concentrations of reb m. (3) converting reb a into reb m using enzymes

Note that Stevia is a problem for people who have had kidney stones. It contains high amounts of Oxalate, which is the chemical that is at the core of the most common form of kidney stone.

Spinach and Almonds also contain a lot of Oxalate.

Ask me how I know.

If basic search results can be believed: A 100 gram serving of spinach has 645mg of oxalate. A one ounce serving of almonds has 122. Replacing an ounce of sugar with stevia gives you 6mg.

Stevia is high in oxalate per gram, but it's hundreds of times sweeter than sugar. How low do you need to go? I see one site recommending staying under 200mg of oxalate per day.

I target 0mg of Oxalate whenever possible, because I know that there are many hidden sources of Oxalate that I cannot reasonably detect or prevent.

Oyster mushrooms too, apparently.

try erythritol. it's very similar to monkfruit, and cheaper everywhere I've looked.

It’s 60% as sweet as sugar, while monkfruit is several times as sweet. And it behaves different when heated. But unlike monkfruit, it’s legal in the EU ;)

I mean, I don't really add sweeteners to things myself so I'm just judging ingredient labels.

Was going to comment on sugar alcohols' well known… laxative effects, but apparently erythritol is better about that so that's interesting.

That wouldn't exactly distinguish them from sugar.

Do you mean High Fructose Corn Syrup?

No.

I think soda with sugar is disgustingly sweet, but I like the taste of aspartame.

I have always actually preferred the taste of Diet Coke to regular coke.

And the taste of Coke Zero over both, in my case.

Yea I like that as well over regular

I absolutely can't stand the mouthfeel for "sugar" sodas, both the real cane sugar and HFCS variants. It's disgusting. All these newer "zero" versions have pretty much nailed the taste without the gross mouthfeel.

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