Hey, Remember when the Coca-Cola company decided to discontinue a successful product in favor of a new formulation? Yeah, pretty much every human being knows how that turned out… except for the current executives of the Coca Cola company.
On Wednesday, Coca-Cola announced plans to stop selling Coke Zero in the US in August, replacing it with a beverage with a different recipe, design, and name: Coke Zero Sugar.
“It is a reinvention of Coke Zero,” CEO James Quincey said in a call with investors.
Coke Zero Sugar is already a major hit outside the US, with growth figures reaching the teens. In the US, Coke Zero sales grew 3.5% in 2016, compared with Diet Coke’s drop of 1.9% in the same time period.
Maybe it will work this time. Personally, I never cared for Coke Zero. I did like Pepsi One and Pepsi Max, but those, of course, have been discontinued.
Maybe a health guru here can edumacate me on diet colas. I have read that the substitutes for sugars have some rough effects on gut bacteria and that the sugar substitutes actually facilitate weight gain.
I drink a Coke every now and then, so I have gone back to high test, knowing that it doesn’t begin to out do the calories I get from my 5:00 pm “medicine.”
In my years, I have been warned off butter, coconut oil, decaf, sugar, eggs, and so forth — only to learn that I should be back on them for health reasons.
So, my skepticism toward secret poisons embedded in common foods is fairly acute. But it leaves me just as dumb and ignorant as I was before being misled.
I was also under the impression that difference between the formula for Coke Zero and Diet Coke was between slim and none. What separates one from the other?
Stupid bit of trivia: Soda companies created low-calorie brands like Pepsi One and Coke Zero to market to men who thought it was unmanly to drink anything labelled “diet.”
Diet Coke and Coke Zero do taste different, I assume the artificial sweeteners are different? Once I switched to Coke Zero, I couldn’t drink Diet Coke anymore. I believe they are tweaking Coke Zero to make it taste more like classic Coke. If they succeed, I’ll be one happy customer. I don’t drink coffee or tea. Besides water, Coke Zero is my go-to beverage. They better not screw it up.
Diet sodas are evil tasting vile concoctions. (and some studies are showing they might be worse than non-diet) The artificial sweeteners leave a rotten after taste, and HFCS is only tolerable. I try to stick with sugar, so up here it tends to be Mexican Coke. Never changed formula after New Coke then “Classic” Coke. If it ain’t got Sugar, it ain’t Coke. Expensive though. Woodman’s in Green Bay has 500ml for 99 cents a bottle.
In Texas, I used to get the HEB sodas with Sugar. But I guess I could have it shipped here. HEB does ‘net sales.
Do they now? For grocery items? Interesting. I was rather amused when I went to my local Safeway the other day and saw H-E-B pepper jack cheese in the markdown case. Unless they farmed out that item to a contract dairy, I was under the impression that HE Butt owned its own processing facilities, much like Kroger does. It was kind of like seeing a Target store brand item in a Walmart.
Helio, newer studies have shown that people who use soft drinks made with artificial sweeteners do tend to have an issue with weight gain. It’s theorized that when the body craves sweet foods and expects to get them in the form of sugar, and then does not, that the physiological response is to consume more foods in order to get the sugar ‘fix’. That could be in the form of sweetened, sugary foods, or in the form of those with more complex carbohydrates (such as snack foods like potato or corn chips, etc).The artificial sweeteners may taste sweet and fool the tongue, but don’t actually fool the body, which expects sweet foods to have a certain composition.
As for the sweeteners themselves, this is a matter of ongoing debate. The effects of aspartame [Equal®] are still debated, several decades after its approval. A pilot friend of mine won’t consume it, claiming that it is banned under commercial flight regulations (to my knowledge, it is not). A Duke University study alleged that sucralose [Splenda®] reduced fecal microflora, increased intestinal pH levels and contributed to weight increases, all in rats (no human studies have proven these claims). Another reason health nuts don’t like sucralose is because it is essentially chemically-altered sugar and they believe that foods that the body knows how to metabolize shouldn’t be altered to those it does not as the law of unintended consequences may apply. (They would point to Olestra, which was a chemically-altered fat substitute originally approved for use in snack foods, like potato chips. Its use was discontinued after it caused cramps, bloating, and diarrhea in those who consumed it.)
In other news, careful readers will note Bruce is back on Twitter and was featured in a post on Twitchy. (The object of his disaffection cited in the post being yet another angry gay guy masquerading as a woke SJW.)
Broken link in above; corrected:
http://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2017/07/26/boomage-gaypatriot-schools-twitter-verified-sjw-babbling-about-white-privileged-gays/
To this dedicated*
(addicted?)old-formula Coke-Cola drinker …Diet and Coke Zero taste nasty and foul, just like Pepsi. **yetch** **gag**Perhaps this “new” formula will be palatable. I doubt it…
* – at-least 2-liters/day, sometimes 3 on a busy day doing office-work. Perhaps I have a problem? There are some days I only have a few…
Thank you Ted B.
In 1978 my grandmother left me several hundred shares of Coca Cola stock. I did not yield to the temptation to sell any of it and it has grown up beautifully.
Personally, I developed a taste for pure seltzer, no sugar, no artificial sweeteners. I can flavor it with pure vanilla (creme soda), or lemon lime, orange, cherry, strawberry…using simple baking flavorings. A quarter teaspoon or less is all that is needed for a liter.
SodaStream all the way.
FWIW, I cam down with a spot of pneumonia earlier this year. After I got over it, I found I had completely lost my taste for diet soda. Dunno why.
It’s my understanding that Diet Coke uses the ‘new coke’ formula from years back, while Coke Zero uses the Coke Classic formula. I can only drink Coke Zero if it is ice cold, then it tastes like Coke to me.
More and more I just drink tea.
Diet Coke certainly tastes like New Coke… **yetch** **gag**
Coke Zero tastes like old-formula Coke with a formaldehyde frog garnish.
For what it’s worth, I’ve lost 30 pounds over the past year drinking pretty much nothing but flavored seltzer water and diet soda- though mostly seltzer water.
Go you Sean L. I’m down 20 lbs through portion control, avoiding carbs, and a 6 times a week workout schedule.