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Comment by Telemakhos | Hacker News Reader

There have been a number of taste tests that show that, when blindfolded, most people can't distinguish between Coke and Sprite, let alone Coke and a close imitation, without the visual cue: throw together enough sugar, acid, and carbonation, and it overwhelms the body's ability to distinguish taste. It's a story often repeated in marketing (like Twitchells' Branded Nation), because forging a distinction between indistinguishable parity products is marketing's job.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1982/0...

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I think if you believe this I'd recommend trying it yourself.

I've done this blinded with colas, and it's pretty easy to tell the difference between Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Pepsi, and Diet Pepsi. You might not know which is which without some history drinking them, but they all taste very distinct by themselves.

Really disagree that these are indistinguishable parity products, or that most people would not be obviously able to tell the difference between them.

I'll say that the 'Zero' products have gotten quite good. Not indistinguishable, but closer than I expected. On a couple of occasions I've inadvertently purchased real Dr Pepper instead of Dr Pepper Zero and not realized I was drinking the real thing. That's high praise for the Zero version (notably, the Diet version of Dr Pepper, while it has a following of its own, is extremely unlike real Dr Pepper).

I don't know but I recently drank coca cola which my brother ordered and then after a few days, I decided to drink diet coca cola because I was discussing it with my brother and he mentioned that diet and normal coke are the same price and I started wondering if there are negative effects to normal coke and not much for diet coke and they both are same price and I am drinking it for the taste, then diet coke makes the most sense so I decided to order it

Not sure if its just me though but after drinking both diet coke and normal coke the taste gap between diet coke and normal coke felt really huge to me.

You mention about Dr pepper and how strikingly similar Dr Pepper zero is, what are some other drinks which have a genuinely similar.

But now realizing this, I think that there is a difference between diet, zero and normal variants, this is the first time I am discovering this. Time to drink coke zero and coke but the winters are really cold so I might have to wait this winter season

Can confirm, could never stand the taste of Diet Coke, but Coke Zero tastes pretty close to the original to me! To the point that I pretty much never drink regular Coke anymore, if Coke Zero is available. There's basically no downside to going with Zero, imo. And the upside of no calories is pretty great.

That’s because Diet Coke is not based on classic Coke. It’s based on new coke, it should really be called diet new coke. Coke Zero is based on Coca Cola classic.

It's actually the opposite-- New Coke came out after Diet Coke, and was more-or-less Diet Coke with sugar (HFCS, whatever) instead of aspartame.

But yeah it's definitely not the same as classic Coke. Also gets rid of the coca extract, I think?

If Diet Coke has a bitter taste to you (like it does to me) you may have a genetic mutation that allows aspartame to bind to both sweet and bitter taste receptors (as I understand it). For most people it only binds to sweet receptors.

Yeah, it tastes like medicine to me.

Although to be fair, the last time I had a diet coke, I was, dunno, maybe 10? So like 20 years ago at this point. So maybe if I had some now, I'd have a different opinion. But I don't think diet coke is even sold here in Brazil anymore, It's been years since I last saw one. I was actually not aware that it was still sold in the US!

IIRC, the diet versions of pepsi and coke are deliberately a bit different, while the zero ones are trying to taste the same as the regular ones.

Diet coke is much cheaper to produce, sugar is the most expensive part of coca cola by far.

> You mention about Dr pepper and how strikingly similar Dr Pepper zero is, what are some other drinks which have a genuinely similar.

Any of the Zero variants are worth a try, in my experience. Historically I choose Coke, and for quite a while I drank Coke Zero, which is pretty good. More recently in the last year or so I've fixated on Pepsi Zero, even though I've never really been a Pepsi fan otherwise. I also like Dr Pepper Zero, as I mentioned in my first post. I've never really liked any of the diet versions of soda, they just tasted too different to me.

Diet Coke is really the sugar free version of New Coke, now discontinued. It wasn’t meant to taste the same as Coca-Cola Classic.

I can't drink normal coke, it disgusts me, leaves an unpleasant sensation on my teeth, probably the sugar, but love the zero. It's also zero cal, which is a huge bonus.

Are you into any other super-processed sugar treats, out of curiosity?

I wouldn't say so, no.

unpleasant sensation on my teeth

That's more likely the phosphoric acid softening them.

Only get that sensation when drinking coke made with real sugar. Does this also happen with HFCS versions?

Could be wrong but I heard phosphoric acid is in similar amounts in all of them for the unusual reason that this inorganic acid actually enhances (brings out) the cola flavor. Seems this doesn't happen with normal carboxylic food acids, malic, citric, tartaric, etc.

It's an odd combination, I think colas are the only instance where a mineral acid is used synergistically with another ingredient to enhance flavor.

Someone with greater knowledge may wish to expand on this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphate_soda predates Coca Cola.

That's interesting. I'll need to find some Dr Pepper Zero and try it. My history of Dr Pepper and of diet sodas goes like this.

1. I only drank non-diet sodas. Pepsi was my favorite, Dr Pepper or root beer was the runner up at restaurants the had Coke (which I hate) rather than Pepsi.

2. At some point I started trying to reduce the percent of my calories that came from carbs. I was able to continue drinking non-diet soda and meet my goal but only because (1) I usually only drank a small glass with each meal, and (2) I was able to reduce carbs from other things enough to leave room for the soda.

3. That reducing from other things enough to leave room for the soda got annoying, so I made myself drink diet sodas for a few days. I quickly got used to Diet Dr Pepper and started to enjoy it. Diet Pepsi became OK, but Diet Dr Pepper was better. Once this switch was made and I didn't need to make room for soda carbs I could stick to my carb goal pretty easily.

4. After a few years of that, I had oral surgery. They advised me to not drink carbonated beverages for a week or so afterwards, so I drank water. I was actually fine with that so after two weeks I finished off the 2L bottles of Diet Dr Pepper in my fridge and then just drank water at home for the next few years. I would still have a Diet Dr Pepper or a Diet Pepsi or Pepsi Zero or Diet root beer on the few occasions I ate out.

If I ate out at a place that did not those I would sometimes get a non-diet Dr Pepper or Pepsi and it was terrible. It seemed too sweet. It tasted like someone had mixed some thick sweetener into it so not only was the flavor off the feel of the drink was wrong.

It was bad enough that I would no longer eat out at those places. I'd only get food to go from there.

So now I'm really curious if Dr Pepper Zero will taste good to me or not. If my problem with regular Dr Pepper is just due to the sugar I should probably be OK with Dr Pepper Zero. But if what I really now dislike is non-diet Dr Pepper's flavor it sounds like I'll also dislike Dr Pepper Zero.

That link actually clearly says down in the body that they could pick the lemon lime out from the colas, which makes sense.

Throwing together sugar, acid, and carbonation does not overwhelm your sense of taste. Thats most bottled beverages. If you believe this, you should see a doctor.

But many beverages are very similar to other beverages. It’s not an inherent flaw in taste perception that Coke and Pepsi taste alike to most people, it’s that one was intentionally made to be only slightly different than the other.

Coke and Sprite taste extremely different.

Coke and Pepsi are a lot closer but still distinguishable.

They’re like siblings in neighbor family. You can tell immediately that they’re related, but they’re clearly separate entities.

If you cannot tell the difference between a cola and a lemonade, then that says more about the person performing the taste test than anything.

Sounds as believable as that nonsense about onions tasting the same as apples if you hold your nose.

Lol, and here I am choking in shock when I grab a sip from a sprite can instead of the coke that I thought it was. Turns out I was just blindly (literally) falling for marketing? I don't think so, Tim.

Most people prefer Pepsi's taste. Unless the brands are revealed, then the brand recognition sets in and your brain rewards you more for choosing Coca Cola (c)

So you can taste it, but that doesn't matter in the end.

Their example wasn't even Coke vs Pepsi but Coke vs Sprite.

Last I recall, you get different answers if you taste just a sip verses a larger amount. Pepsi has a good first taste, but after a couple of sips it's pretty overpoweringly sweet, even compared to other sodas.

Yea, you've never drank the off brand stuff I see. It's generally significantly different to me.

This is irrelevant and misleading. Just because many people cannot tell flavors apart doesn’t mean that the products are parity and are marketing differentiated.

Sure the majority of people cannot tell flavor notes apart but there exists a certain % of the population that can very reliably distinguish different tastes. Wine sommeliers, fine dining, food science are all professions which require a sensitive palate and smell and it is an over simplification to talk about sodas tasting the same for the majority of people as if it implies there is no difference or speciality in crafting taste.

Supposedly Jell-O was originally to be clear but they needed the food coloring to convince your brain you weren’t just tasting sugar and citric acid instead of the little bit of flavor they added per recipe.

All Jello tastes the same, and that's a hill I'll die on. There are no flavors.

What. You do you, but that’s a highly unusual perception.

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