Diet Coke has been a leading sugar-free soft drink since it was first released in 1982
While Diet Coke was created with its own flavor profile and not as a sugar-free version of the original, Coca-Cola Zero aims to taste just like the “real Coke flavor.” Despite their polar opposite advertising campaigns, the contents and nutritional information of the two sugar-free colas is nearly identical. With that information in hand we at HuffPost Taste needed to know: Which of these two artificially-sweetened Coca-Cola beverages actually tastes better? And can you even tell the difference between them?
Nutritional Information: Many say that a can of Diet Coke actually contains somewhere between 1-4 calories, but if a serving size contains fewer than 5 calories a company is not obligated to note it in its nutritional information. Diet Coke’s nutritional information reads 0 Calories, 0g Fat, 40mg Sodium, 0g Total Carbs, 0g Protein.
Ingredients: Carbonated water, caramel color, aspartame, phosphoric acid, potassium benzonate, natural flavors, citric acid, caffeine.
Artificial sweetener: Aspartame
Coca-Cola Zero
Coca-Cola Zero’s nutritional information reads 0 Calories, 0g Fat, 40mg Sodium, 0g Total Carbs, 0g
Protein.
Artificial sweetener: Aspartame and acesulfame potassium
Ingredients: Carbonated water, caramel color, phosphoric acid, aspartame, potassium benzonate, natural flavors, potassium citrate, acesulfame potassium, caffeine.
A few people said Diet Coke tasted much better ... unbeknownst to them, they were actually referring to Coca-Cola Zero. Coke Zero and Diet Coke are Coca Cola's low-calorie sodas with artificial sweeteners. The difference is the target market segments: Coke Zero is Coca Cola's product line aimed at men, and Diet Coke is aimed at women. The other difference is flavor: Diet Coke has a distinct taste of its own, but Coke Zero is made to taste like regular Coke.
Coke Zero is also called Coca-Cola Zero, and Diet Coke is branded Coke Light or Coca-Cola Light in some countries.
Coke Zero and Diet Coke Variations
The Coca-Cola Company makes both Coke Zero and Diet Coke.
The company introduced Coke Zero in 2005. Coke Zero currently comes in the following flavors: Coca-Cola Cherry Zero, Coca-Cola Vanilla Zero and Coca-Cola Lime Zero. It also comes in caffeine-free. The brand is sold as Coca-Cola Zero in some other countries.
The Coca-Cola Company introduced Diet Coke in 1982. Currently Diet Coke comes in the following flavors: Diet Coke with Lemon, Diet Coke with Lime, Diet Raspberry Coke and Diet Black Cherry Vanilla Coke. It also comes in three variations: Diet Coke Caffeine-Free, Diet Coke Sweetened with Splenda and Diet Coke Plus. Diet Coke is branded Coke Light or Coca-Cola Light in some countries.
Nutrition and Ingredients
Both Coke Zero and Diet Coke have the same ingredients base: Carbonated water, caramel color, phosphoric acid, potassium benzonate, natural flavors, acesulfame potassium and caffeine. Both use the same sweetener, a blend of aspartame and acesulfame-K. Both Coke Zero and Diet Coke are sugar-free.
The calories are negligible enough that the company is able to advertise both as zero-calorie. Neither Coke Zero nor Diet Coke has any fat, carbohydrates or protein. The both have 70 milligrams of sodium.
The difference:
Food acid: Coke Zero has potassium citrate, while Diet Coke has citric acid.
Caffeine content: 9.6 mg per 100 ml for Coke Zero and 12.8 mg per 100 ml for Diet Coke.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Pepsi steadily gained on Coke in terms of market share. Characters in the ads always picked Pepsi, of course, but so did most people who tried it in real life—the sweeter taste was more appealing. By 1983, Pepsi was outselling Coke in supermarkets, leaving Coke dependent on its larger infrastructure of soda machines and fast food tie-ins to preserve its lead. But even better, Pepsi forced Coke into an infamous business blunder.
Faced with eroding market share, Coke began a series of its own internal taste tests aimed at developing a superior product.
A sweeter cola reformulated to best both Pepsi and the classic formulation of Coke in blind taste tests. Despite declining market share, Coke was still by far the market leader over Pepsi—and the company’s millions of loyal customers weren’t looking for a new flavor. Pepsi recorded the fastest year-on-year sales growth in the company’s history during New Coke’s first month, while a consortium of Coca-Cola bottlers decided to sue the company for changing the product.
But then Coca-Cola’s senior leadership did something tough: They admitted that they were wrong. And they executed a strategic pivot that’s kept them on top of the rivalry ever since. They reintroduced the original formula under the name “Coca-Cola Classic” and sold it in parallel with New Coke for a while.
Over time, the “new” Coke was phased out, and Coca-Cola Classic became just, well, Coke once again—a product so culturally iconic that across a significant swath of the United States it serves as a generic term for what decent people call “soda” and Midwesterners call “pop.”A pepsi blind taste tests suggest that people like it better than Coke. Yet people keep buying more Coke.
One theory of this “Pepsi Paradox,” described by Lone Frank in Scientific American, is that we should take the Pepsi Challenge at face value. Coke’s victory is a triumph of branding over flavor, and a clear sign that consumer companies should invest lots of money in advertising. Researchers intrigued by the paradox have suggested that Coke’s ads actually rewire the human brain.
The model in the pic is Daria Pleggenkuhle
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