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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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