I really like soda, especially the kinds with lots of caffeine and sugar. However, I have minor panic attacks whenever I drink them and think about all the corn syrup and other scary junk that goes into the soda flowing through my body. On the other hand I can't stand diet sodas - whose chemicals won't make me fat and diabetic (and probably take a lot longer to insidiously wreck the body) but taste like crap.
So why do they taste like crap?!
A group from my own campus (The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), has come up with some methods to determine why diet sodas suck.
Consumers may claim they don't like diet soda because of artificial sweeteners, but Schmidt and sensory scientist Lee think people are also influenced by a subtle difference called "mouth-feel." Think body, fullness, thickness; regular soda contains high-fructose corn syrup, diet soda doesn't.What makes these scientists think mouth-feel is the culprit? For one thing, artificial sweeteners have been greatly improved and extensively studied. "Taste profiles for artificial sweeteners now closely match the one for sucrose, which humans describe as the perfect sweetness," Lee said.
But the most compelling piece of evidence is the verdict of Lee's sensory panel--12 people trained for four weeks to use a 15-point scale in order to rate the characteristics that contribute to the mouth-feel of diet and regular soda. Lee called her panelists "highly trained instruments" because they could detect significant differences in the mouth-feel of 14 samples that the scientist's super-sensitive lab instruments identified as very, very small.
Too bad they haven't found a non-toxic ingredient to replace all the bad ones in order to attain the same "mouth feel" as a regular soda.
Before I leave you with this exciting new information I thought I'd give you this last little quote;
"The human mouth cavity appears to be a super-rheometer (the lab instrument that measures viscosity or thickness)"
A mouth cavity?! sounds like the author is talking about a huge alien demon mouth ready to engulf Tokyo.
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Comments
Personally the only pop I enjoy drinking is the stuff with aspertame in it. For whatever reason I can't stand regular pop. Diet Coke forever for me.
Posted by: Clark | April 26, 2007 02:22 PM
As a diet soda drinker, colas with aspartame taste better than those with sucralose[Diet Coke vs Coke Xero]. The opposite is true for diet grapefruit - sucralose is better than aspartame [different brands, though - Shasta vs Fresca and house brands].
Maybe it's just me.
Posted by: natural cynic | April 26, 2007 02:33 PM
One of the great things living on the southern border is being able to get sodas from Mexico. They are still made with cane sugar and taste so much better and fill you up before you drink to much.
Posted by: KevinC | April 26, 2007 03:40 PM
So is there any truth that aspartame can cause cancer? There is a lot on the internet about that, and apparently some study out of Italy or Greece recently confirmed it.
Posted by: Doug | April 26, 2007 03:42 PM
There's a bit of conjecture that diet sodas are not great for dieters. Something about the body expecting a certain amount of sugar and still ramping up fat storage, even though the calorie count is nil.
Then there is the worst thing about colas, diet or regular, which is the phosphoric acid. They promote kidney stones. I have two stones in a years time, curtailing my cola consumption considerably. In the process, I lost 15 pounds, by doing nothing else. My diet and sedentary lifestyle didn't change, except I cut down on cola.
Pepsi's a killer, man.
Posted by: Jonathan | April 27, 2007 01:50 PM
I was under the impression that up here in Canada we don't use HFCS in our Coke. And we're not big fans of diet up here, either. So this explanation seems pretty hokey.
Posted by: JCK | April 27, 2007 02:03 PM
Ingredients on CANADIAN regular coke:
Carbonated water, sugar/glucose-fructose, caramel colour, phosphoric acid, natural flavours, caffeine
No mention of corn syrup. I assume American ingredients have the notable difference?
Posted by: JCK | April 27, 2007 02:06 PM
Sodas in Western Europe has no high-fructose corn syrup either. Seems to me this story is relevant only to Americans. Diet sodas still taste different in other parts of the world, so artificial sweeteners must be an important factor.
Posted by: Alexis | April 27, 2007 02:57 PM
And therefore I would argue that it's hardly relevant to Americans, either. Corn syrup and the lack of it may make the soda taste *different*, but not *bad* like artificial sweeteners do. I imagine the difference is like Coke to Pepsi; they taste different from one another, and people can have their preferences, but compared against each other it's hard to argue that one is *bad*.
But Coke with sugar doesn't just taste different, it tastes better. Coke without sugar simply tastes bad in the opinion of many.
Posted by: JCK | April 27, 2007 03:12 PM
I (and many others, I believe) can taste aspartame very strongly. I absolutely hate the stuff. Even regular HFCS or sugar-based sodas sometimes include it now.
The only artificial sweetener that I *like* the taste of is sodium cyclamate - banned in the USA, but widely used elsewhere. Saccharin is also OK in small quantities, but it's fairly hard to find. (Schweppes Diet Tonic Water is the only diet soda that I drink, because it uses saccharin.)
Posted by: Geoff Arnold | April 27, 2007 03:53 PM
Coke lovers wait every year for Passover, when they buy the yellow-capped bottles which are "Kosher for Passover." In the US, that means they are made with cane sugar, since corn products are forbidden during the holiday. I have about 30 bottles stashed away at home, enough to last the year.
Posted by: Laura | April 27, 2007 03:57 PM
In my opinion Diet Rite is the best artificially flavored soft drink - it that tastes the closest to sugar sweetened ones. Diet Coke is flavorless.
Posted by: Tim | April 27, 2007 04:44 PM
Diet sodas don't taste bad to everybody. Not everybody can taste the chemical taste of artificial sweetners, just as not everybody can taste the toxins in brussels sprouts. So for those people the question of why diet sodas taste like crap has no meaning.
Posted by: Alan Kellogg | April 27, 2007 05:38 PM
An interesting note: I've found that there's an island of palatability with a ratio of about 5 parts Diet to 1 part regular Dr. Pepper, American version. If one uses 10 parts Diet Dr. Pepper/1 part Regular Dr. Pepper/1 part Regular Pepsi, the result is in my experience actually tastier than Dr. Pepper, and I can drink a 52 ounce container of it over the course of a day and absorb at most the calories of a single can. ^.^
Posted by: Azkyroth | April 27, 2007 06:37 PM
The question is, do people who like diet soda like brussels sprouts? (I confess I like them and fiddleheads, an other vegetable many don't care for)
Canadian diet pops taste quite different than in the US. Whenever I go home I tend to go pop free for the most part.
Posted by: Clark Goble | April 27, 2007 10:29 PM
What Geoff Arnold said.
Speaking for myself, I know *exactly* why diet sodas taste like crap, for me. I think I must have a mutation in a taste receptor -- aspartame, acesulfame-K, all the varieties/brands of phenylalanine-based sweeteners don't taste sweet to me past the first few seconds of super-sweet overload. Then the taste morphs into something HORRIBLE. It's a weird sort of very strong sour-bitter nastiness which seems to cling to my tongue for hours -- seriously, I'm tasting the stuff for 1 1/2 - 2 hours after I first have it in my mouth, and even brushing my tongue doesn't rid me of it.
What's bad is that it isn't just diet sodas. It's *everything* that uses these sweeteners, including all the things that advertise like they're full-fat, but use aspartame to supplement the sugar because it's cheaper.
Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the widespread use of aspartame in such a wide range of stuff anyway. Given that we have had a PKU baby in the family, I have to wonder -- what happens to PKU babies when they grow up, past the point where we would ordinarily worry about their diets, when faced with such huge (compared to what diets used to be, I mean) amounts of phenylalanine in their diet? How does it affect them physiologically? Do they still risk neurological damage?
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | April 28, 2007 01:23 PM
I don't know what this says about me and my appearance, but servers at restaurants insist on bring me Diet Coke (or Diet Pepsi) unless I constantly stress regular when I order my drink. Saying "Coke" along does not do it. And even when I order a "regular Coke", the server will bring me a diet cola for my refill unless I reiterate "regular" when offered a second round. Since I'm not obese, I figure it must be something about my demographic. Is it true that all middle-aged white males who lunch alone prefer diet soft drinks? Something like that must be going on. Even the place where I'm a semi-regular, a restaurant near my college campus, still makes this mistake way too often. Drives. Me. Nuts.
And I really, really hate that nasty diet stuff.
Posted by: Zeno | April 28, 2007 01:32 PM
I am firmly in Luna the Cat's camp. The last time that I had a diet soda (I did not check the label carefully enough when I picked the bottle up), it took about two hours for the nastiness to wear off. Yuck. I would emphasise that mouth-feel will not do that. It is the flavour of the stuff, really.
On the other hand, I love Brussels sprouts. Thus, I suspect that, if there is a correlation between preferences in aspartame and sprouts, it is not immensely strong.
Posted by: Opisthokont | April 28, 2007 05:33 PM
I had high hopes for sucralose (Splenda), and it's in almost everything in the grocery stores in California; but it tastes strangely sweet, just enough different from regular sugar to be annoying.
I have developed a taste for coffee without adding sugar at all -- a latte with fat free milk is sweet enough because the warmed milk is a little sweeter than cold milk.
I had heard that there is a genetic componant to "tasting" the bitterness in artificial sweeteners the same as for tasting bitterness in brussels sprouts, but it is not necessrily the same gene. I can also curl my tongue -- but I have not heard that the tongue curling, artificial sweetener tasting, and brussels sprouts tasting are all related. :-)
Posted by: Wendy | April 28, 2007 06:35 PM
I can taste the artificial sweeteners too, but the vast majority of the reason that I stay away from them (aspartame in particular) is that they give me blinding headaches.
Posted by: Interrobang | April 28, 2007 06:46 PM
I, too, can taste aspartame and dislike it. It also gives me terrible headaches. Soft drinks with sugar are too sweet, artificially sweetened taste horrible (and the headaches) - so juice, tea, coffee or water for me, please (no milk - blech!).
Chardyspal
Posted by: Chardyspal | April 28, 2007 09:11 PM
I can readily tell the difference between regular and diet cola-flavored soda, but not between citrusy ones (e.g., Mountain Dew).
The real question is, do bees congregate around spent cans of soda containing sucralose or aspartame? I bet that pisses them right off, or at least addles them.
Posted by: kemibe | April 29, 2007 01:11 AM
Mouthfeel might be a minor issue, but taste is obviously the #1 issue. The article blithely claims artificial sweeteners are virtually identical to sugar, but I literally don't know a single person who can't distinguish at least one of aspartame, ascesulfame, or sucralose from sugar. I've also met at least one person for each sweetener who finds it nasty to the point they'd rather have unsweetened whatever.
The nasty tastes involved are different and different people have different preferences. Some like aspartame but not sucralose and others vice versa, so it's definitely not one gene. I've also met some people who find aspartame mildly disagreeable and a few who find it totally disgusting so I suspect there's more than one tasting variability for that alone. All 3 have similar mouthfeels (ie same as the unsweetened base since they're so concentrated) so mouthfeel can't be a major problem. (Cane sugar does have a mouthfeel albeit different from corn syrup.)
I can actually distinguish all three. I personally like the taste of aspartame and sucralose but ascesulfame has that saccharin bitterness to me (yes, I know not everybody tastes the bitterness of saccharin but most do). I can still tell a difference between either sucralose or aspartame and sugar, even though I find the tastes agreeable.
Posted by: Curt Adams | April 29, 2007 03:50 AM
Wow, so it's not just me! Cool!
Seriously, I think that these people must seriously underestimate the taste-sense variability that is out there for various sources of "sweet".
Posted by: Luna_the_cat | April 29, 2007 06:03 AM
"mouth feel"? eh, maybe. Aspertame literally tastes like cow shit to me. Not strongly of cow shit but I have been around enough cows to know cow shit when I get a whiff. I am talking about meadow-raised cows. Feedlot cows smell far worse.
Posted by: greensmile | April 29, 2007 08:49 AM
I'm out here on one of the tail ends of the distribution: I will not drink soda because I hate the texture and taste of corn syrup.
Posted by: Dustin | April 29, 2007 08:20 PM
You noticed that too? I couldn't tell if Diet Pepsi really did have a slight eau de shit, or if that was just association built up from drinking it in close proximity to cowshit. Now I know.
Posted by: Dustin | April 29, 2007 08:23 PM
Mouth feel: Home brewers sometime add Malto-dextrin to home brewed beer for additional/improved mouth feel in heavier beers. Might have to pick up some at the home brew shop next time I'm getting ingredients and try adding it to a diet cola.
However I would add that I prefer the taste/texture of diet cola to their non diet counterparts. Regular colas have a cloying sweetness to them that I don't get from diet. Of course I could simply be proof that you get used to anything, I've been drinking diet sodas for 30 years now, going back to the original Tab Cola.
Posted by: Chris | April 30, 2007 12:44 PM
I hated diet soda, but switched during highschool due to the quantity I was drinking. Now I cant stand regular soda, too sweet. You are accustom to the taste, thus the crap. Now repeat the test with diet soda drinkers, very different outcome.
Posted by: Brook | April 30, 2007 03:57 PM
Greensmile: I'll take your word on the taste of cow shit... :P
Anyway, I definitely notice a decrease in sweetness in Diet colas, and the taste is somewhat bitter as well. Hmm...
Posted by: Azkyroth | April 30, 2007 10:59 PM