PepsiCo to Drop Aspartame from Diet Pepsi

I have a slight fascination with sweeteners. About five years ago I imported a kilo of "Neotame" sweetener from a chem factory in Shanghai. It was claimed to be 10,000-12,000 times sweeter than sugar. It's a white powder and came in a metal can with a crimped lid and typically plain chemical labeling. Supposedly it is FDA-approved and a distant derivative of aspartame.

US customs held it for two weeks before sending it on to Colorado with no explanation. When received, the box was covered in "inspected" tape and they had put the canister in a clear plastic bag. The crimped lid looked like a rottweiler chewed it open and white powder was all over the inside of the bag. I unwisely opened this in my kitchen with no respirator as advised by the MSDS which I read after the fact (I am not a smart man).

Despite careful handling of the bag, it is so fine in composition that a small cloud of powder erupted in front of me and a hazy layer of the stuff settled over the kitchen. Eyes burning and some mild choking from inhaling the cloud, I instantly marveled at how unbelievably sweet the air tasted, and it was delicious. For several hours I could still taste it on my lips. The poor customs inspector will have had a lasting memory of that container I'm pretty sure.

Even after a thorough wipe-down, to this day I encounter items in my kitchen with visually imperceptible amounts of residue. After touching it and getting even microscopic quantities of the stuff on a utensil or cup, bowl, plate, whatever, it adds an intense element of sweetness to the food being prepared, sometimes to our delight. I still have more than 900g even after giving away multiple baggies to friends and family (with proper safety precautions).

We have been hooked on it since that first encounter. I keep a 100mL bottle of solution in the fridge which is used to fill smaller dropper bottles. I've prepared that 100mL bottle three times over five years, and that works out to about 12g of personal (somewhat heavy) usage for two people in that time. Probably nowhere near the LD50.

I carry a tiny 30mL dropper bottle of the solution for sweetening the nasty office coffee and anything else as appropriate. Four drops to a normal cup of coffee. We sweeten home-carbonated beverages, oatmeal, baked goods (it is heat stable), use it in marinades, and countless other applications.

I don't know if it's safe. The actual quantity used is so incredibly tiny that it seems irrelevant. I'd sweeten my coffee with polonium-210 if it could be done in Neotame-like quantities. Between this, a salt shaker loaded with MSG and a Darwin fish on my car, I'm doomed anyway.

Non-paywall link:

http://bit.ly/1DxLxwr

Unshortened-URL version:

    https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCEQ-AsoAzAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fpepsico-to-replace-aspartame-with-sucralose-in-diet-pepsi-in-u-s-1429885941&ei=T1s8VYm0H8GpgwTyi4SoCA&usg=AFQjCNHZrziPYCuq9EVY7qBwvxo9yd_Qwg&bvm=bv.91665533,d.eXY

Same news from US News & World Report:

http://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2015/04/24/diet...

I'm exceptionally happy to hear this. My entire life, I hated Diet anything and never realized there were actually multiple zero-calorie sweetener options - I thought they were all different brand names of aspartame!

Then I discovered sucralose/splenda just last year, and was surprised that aside from a distinctive taste that can be identified and being twice as sweet as sugar, it's actually alright. Aspartame to me has this really bitter, tangy taste that I'm not able to ignore. The first swill of a cold aspartame-flavored drink on a hot day is fine for ~0.5 seconds until the flavor kicks in, and then I can't take another sip. Splenda/sucralose works just fine for me in my morning coffee, and if you mix granulated splenda with refined sugar in a 1:1 or 3:1 ratio, you can use it in baked sweets without it imparting too much of its distinctive flavor. (Personally, I find it's a decent low-calorie option for baking apple pies).

I'm also glad to hear they're switching to sucralose because - maybe this is silly - it makes me assume they have reason to believe it's safer.

(Diet Dr Pepper and Diet Canada Dry taste OK, FYI. Not identical, but close enough to the real thing.)

I'd much rather spend my money on Dry Soda. I buy alot of their Cucumber flavor myself and the stuff is delicious. It doesn't leave you feeling gross and has much less sugar, plus natural flavor extracts and uses cane sugar.

http://www.drysoda.com/

More expensive, but worth it.

Edit: also, I like the Stevia soda, but no-calorie sweeteners always leave an acrid taste in my mouth, and upset my stomach so I prefer Dry Soda or just plain seltzer water.

Finally! The trouble with aspartame is that it breaks down under heat, or even just over time. Since the cola manufacturers stopped bottling locally and shipping through their own supply chain, cases of cola are more likely to spoil. Sucralose is heat-stable, so it can be used in hot drinks and in baking, and won't break down every time some delivery person leaves a case of soda sitting in the sun.

Until recently, production of sucralose was confined to one vendor, Tate and Lyle, and they had limited production capacity. The last patent expired in 2009, so now others can make it. But it's a difficult production process, and the competitors have had trouble ramping up capacity. Also, a few years ago, Tate and Lyle moved production from the US to Singapore, then moved it back to their plant in Alabama, still the largest sucralose plant in the world. The process is energy-intensive enough that high energy costs in Singapore were a serious problem.

The competitor in India gave up, but the competitor in China, JK Sucralose, seems to be doing well. Tate and Lyle says that supply now exceeds demand, complains about competition, and just raised sucralose prices 20%.[1] It's about $80 - $100/kg for food-grade sucralose. Diet Coke with Splenda has about 80mg of sucralose per 16oz bottle, so the cost is about one cent per serving.

[1] http://www.foodnavigator.com/Business/Tate-Lyle-raises-sucra...

Of course they're yanking it because of "consumer concerns", i.e., Dr. Joe Mercola managed to convince people by the thousands that aspartame will make your testicles shrink and give you cancer and your kids autism. Unless you have phenylketonurea (in which case you can't eat much of anything anyway), aspartame is no more harmful than any other artificial sweetener.

Tastes fucking narsty though, so I'll be glad it's gone. But as it turns out, just about anything sweet that isn't fruit is bad for you in the long run, so we should be treating all carbonated sodas the way we treat cigarettes.

As the article state clearly, this is to address consumers concerns and not facts based on science. Aspartame has been accused of so many things yet so few credible scientific paper has really blamed it for anything major.

In Scandinavia, Diet Coke was actually made with sucralose for a couple of years, around 2006-2007. It had a "now with sucralose!" logo and it tasted a lot better than the aspartame version, and was in fact what made me able to switch from sucrose-based Coke to Diet. I was disappointed when they (for unknown reasons) switched back to aspartame.

In Brazil, Coke Zero uses sodium cyclamate, which I hear is illegal in the US. I avoid it at all costs.

Aren't there much better sweeteners these days? I tried erythritol a while ago and it tasted just like sugar to me. Why aren't we using that in more products?

I'm not a fan of Pepsi but they seem to continuously make choices based on the market. Each step is a step to greater market-share.

In Uruguay we have CocaCola with Stevia. Are we the only ones ? I think they are testing it. As a Diet Pepsi fan, I really liked it.

So they're swapping it out for Splenda. Coke already has a Diet Coke with Splenda.

What about not drinking soda pop or loading your food up with sweeteners? Might not be popular but I actually like to taste stuff.

fucking paywall