I go through phases where I feel I should stop drinking soda, and occasionally I do, for a few weeks. It never lasts though, since eventually I have a night where I really need the caffeine to stay up to work on some urgent project, or I just really want that cola taste to pair with fried food or pizza or nachos, and I gots to have a Pepsi, or sometimes a Dr. Pepper. (By the way, I'm typing this at 8am, 3 hours past when I wanted to be asleep, after working 8 straight hours. I'm starving since the peaches I meant to snack on at midnight are still sitting, unsliced, on the kitchen counter, and I'm now gobbling corn chips and washing them down with about a 1 to 3 mixture of mango juice and Tanqueray, which is hitting my empty stomach like a cannonball from the 10m platform. So um... beware typos. And brain-os. And pretty soon drunk-os.)
I'm not a big soda drinker; a day with 2 of them is very rare, but I just figure the empty 150 calories a can is pointless, when I work out so hard to keep a flat stomach. More or less successfully. But I'd like to be a not-soda drinker, so my idea lately is to try and switch to diet soda, as preparation to not drinking the stuff anymore. At least not at home. I can splurge once in a while in a restaurant, I suppose. Unfortunately, I've always hated diet soda. Fortunately, that's part of my plan. I'll drink it for a while and pretty soon I won't want soda anymore at all, since diet soda sucks.
My grandparents used to just Hoover (shop wet-vac?) up the stuff when I was a kid. I'd drink a Pepsi or three every day while visiting them in the summer, and they'd each go through 4-6 cans of Diet Coke. Mostly caffeine free Diet Coke. I was, of course, having the straight Pepsi, and they used to wonder why I was always so hyper. I'd try a sip of one of their Diet Cokes once in a while though, and it would almost make me puke. Literally; I don't mean I didn't like it, I mean that the stuff actually nauseated me. I read Stephen King's
Tommyknockers when it was released in 1990 or so, and when the main character has to force himself to vomit after taking a bunch of sleeping pills, he pours a bunch of salt into a glass of water and drinks that. I used to wonder why he didn't just have a Diet Coke.
Anyway, impendingly-drunken digression aside, since I've sort of resolved to switch to diet soda, I figured I should compare and contrast. I know I like Pepsi more than Coke since I have Coke on airplanes and in restaurants from time to time, and it's just not as good. It's got a kind of malted, gooey flatness to it, while Pepsi is much crisper and fresher on the tongue. I may lapse into wine-inspired terms here in a minute. Be warned.
After checking the selection at CostCo this week, (Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke, but no Coke Zero) I stopped at a Mini Mart on the way home from the gym Thursday night, and picked these two up. Taste test!
I've heard word of mouth extolling the quaffability of Coke Zero, and their commercials are relentless in driving home the "tastes just like Coke" meme. (Actually, most of the Coke Zero commercials are those idiotic "
we're suing ourselves for copyright/taste infringement" ones that I think are easily the dumbest beverage commercials since Budweiser had those non-threatening black guys bellowing "Wazzzzup". After a full football season of those ads, I swore never to drink Budweiser again, a vow not particularly hard to keep, giving the utter mediocrity of their brew. I'd probably have sworn off Coke Zero by now too, based on those stupid lawsuit, faux-reality commercials, if I'd watched TV anywhere other than on the overhead sets at the gym in the last year.)
So, supposedly Coke Zero tastes like Coke (although the fact that their commercials state it is pretty strong evidence that it does not). Ironically, I don't particularly like Coke, but I figured I might like it more than Diet Pepsi, so I had to compare. Hence the (plastic) bottles of Diet Pepsi and Coke Zero. I thought there was a Pepsi One product, at some point, though I don't know what the difference between that and Diet Pepsi might be. (I do know the difference between a big shot of 100 proof gin, or not, in my morning/late night mango juice is, though. Cause I am flying!) They didn't have it at the gas station, faux-7/11 I got my samples at, though, and they didn't have it at CostCo either, so let us never speak of it again. CostCo didn't have Coke Zero either, but that was almost to be expected, since their selection has rocketed downhill over the past year or two. At least 5 or 6 things I used to get there every time are no longer carried, and I do almost as much bulk shopping at Smart & Final as CostCo now. Not that Smart & Final is any good, and it's not as cheap, but since CostCo no longer sells chicken chili, vegetarian refried beans, jalapenos, red pepper flakes, battered chicken strips, canned peas, tater tots, poppers, onion rings, any frozen pizza that's not pepperoni or supreme, sliced black olives, Dr. Pepper, Shi'itake burgers, portobello mushrooms, or any fresh produce that's not 1) rotten in 2 days, or 2) totally green and never to become edibly-ripe, those of us who shop in bulk and live nowhere near a Wal-Mart (and wouldn't shop there if we did) have somewhat limited options.
So, the soda. Or something.
I had the Diet Pepsi Thursday night, pairing it with a variety of fried food appetisers (most of the Smart & Final options listed above) and a garden burger (which CostCo usually has, though brand keeps changing the the price keeps going up). It wasn't bad. Tasted like weak, slightly flat Pepsi, but it was drinkable and didn't have that horrifying chemical additive taste that diet soda usually has. I can't imagine drinking one by itself, just for the taste of it, but it didn't make me want to Tommyknockers all over the floor, and when I had a few inches left in the bottle after my food was done, I sipped it happily enough.
I had the Coke Zero the next day, with a similar menu (for the sake of comparison). It's much different. Tastes absolutely nothing like Coke, which didn't surprise me, after all the effort those commercials spend swearing that it was interchangeable with the American classic. I don't think it's on
my old commercials logic page, but it's pretty much common sense; anything an ad spends that much time telling you is true, is sure to be false.
What does it taste like? I can't really describe it, despite my recent years of wine adjective training. It's shockingly artificial. Like something that fell from space, or was engineered to never spoil and to keep astronauts healthy on long voyages. It's not really food-like, and it doesn't taste organic. It's got a weird, slippery mouth feel too, kind of like mouthwash, as it slips down your throat without leaving any impression on your tongue. It's like some kind of high tech, biologically engineered hydralic solution, like something Data would drink to keep his interior joints squeak-free.
I don't mean this as an insult or a criticism, either. It's nothing like Coke, or any soda with actual sugar in it, but it's distinctive and unique, and it tastes like it's designed to taste like it does -- whereas most diet sodas just taste like lame, melted-ice versions of their full sugar selves. They didn't try to make Coke Zero just another cola-esque liquid; they made it something all its own. I didn't particularly like it, but I can imagine a person deciding they liked it, or growing/choosing to like it, with an intensity that most diet sodas will never know. It's potent and pungent and memorable, and 2 days and I can still remember exactly what it felt like in my mouth, and I'm sure I could pick it out of a blind taste test. Whereas I already have no idea what the Diet Pepsi tasted like, other than being a vaguely cola-ish stuff with a hint of that aspartame-tang sugar free products (and gum) all have these days. (Coke Zero is pure artificial sweetener taste. It leaves your mouth feeling like you just crammed a whole box of Orbitz.)
That said, I doubt I'll ever drink it again. It's just too chemically. I poured out the last 1/3 of it when my food was done, since drinking it was making me kind of uneasy. It didn't taste that bad, but it felt like it was going to give me cancer of the brain, or nasal passages, or something in that area.
So while I can't really recommend the Diet Pepsi, and I'm not sure if I'll buy some of it, or try to just survive on water alone, and the occasional beer (wine too, but not with greasy fried foods), I will not do Coke Zero. Don't trust it. Too weird.
Labels: commercials, food
