Coke Rules

In an attempt to hit the maket of people who, like me, love regular soda, but not the 140 calories per can, and hate the taste of the zero calorie diet sibling, both Coke and Pepsi have come up with low sugar and low carb varieites of their colas.

I just recently had a chance to try both Coke C2 and Pepsi Edge. Both promise 1/2 the carbs and sugar of the regular cola, but with all the taste.

Both of the sodas do so by combining the standard corn syrup with artifical sweetners such as aspartame (Equal) and sucralose (Splenda).

How are they?

Coke C2 looks just like the real thing, with a smooth crisp cola taste. It tastes almost exactly like regular Coke. So much so, in fact, that unless you were told it wasn't regular coke you wouldn't tell the difference. C2 has no noticable aftertaste and goes down smooth. It is somewhat less spritzy then regular coke and might appear to be just a wee bit flat compared to regular Coke, but not much so that it takes away from the taste.

Pepsi Edge, on the other hand, seems like it was rushed to market. And it was. Pepsi originally intended to introduce their lower carb version in early July, but was forced to move up release due to the June 11th release of C2. Edge appears identical to regular Pepsi, but falls flat on taste. The flavor seemed weak, somewhat flat and not sweet enough compared to reglar Pepsi. It also had a much more noticable diet soda flavor than C2, it also had a very lingering aftertaste, like the time I ate a packet of Sweet and Low.

All in all, I would have to say that while Coke did a good job to soda junkies everywhere, Pepsi failed. Again.

If you don't like diet sodas, but are forced to due to calorie restrictions, I suggest you try Coke C2. It has almost 100% of the taste of cola, with half the sugar, and half the carbs.

Posted by psugrad98 at June 17, 2004 02:54 PM