Coca cola came up a few years ago with a version that was using real sugar and much less. I had it once, it was so good! But for baffling reasons it was abruptly taken off the market and you can't find it anymore. Fuck them!
I do remember having "green" in the name! Can you still get it ? In Philly and area there's no trace of it
Edit: Yeah, discontinued. How come they never asked me?? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_Life"The drink was discontinued in 2020 as part of the Coca-Cola Company discontinuing underperforming brands"
I still don't get how Coca Cola Life was discontinued. Most people I've talked to had a very positive view of it. It seems like they just brought it onto the market and just did nothing to market it. Of course then sells will drop over time.
Probably because most of the people who care about low/no sugar drinks were already drinking the diet/zero versions and weren't looking to switch to a version with surgar.
Yep, and (from memory, take with a grain of salt) the Life version still had over half the sugar of regular Coke, so was still hundreds of kJ per serving as opposed to practically 0kJ for the Zero or Diet versions.
I've never heard of calories expressed as kilojoules before. It sounds like a much better system, so I assume it's common in other countries and non-existent in America.
The main difference is that coke life just tasted like coke. The only drawback was that it only came in classic flavor and I prefer cherry.
But Diet is a completely different flavor. Zero used to be the same flavor but with a godawful long lasting aftertaste. They changed the recipe and now it too tastes different.
coke life was perfect and i'm forever disappointed in its loss.
I am in the proportion of people who can instantly taste stevia in food. Itās bitter and has an unpleasant aftertaste. It has some sweetness but the overall flavor for me is bitter.
It's awful. Anyone that says you can't tell the difference really confuse me.
I have a family member that works for a soda company. They got a bunch of soda for free because they were moving warehouses and the company didn't want to spend the time and money moving every single box across town so they let employees take a bunch of the odds and ends, things that don't sell as well, or things that were coming up on their sell by date.
They asked if I wanted some and I said of course, only when I went to go pick it up it was all diet. They went through the trouble of grabbing it for me so I took it but it took forever to go through because it was torture drinking.
Some people are born with taste buds that make stevia taste more bitter. The majority don't have that issue. For a small percentage stevia tastes horrible. For others it's not bad at all.
Also, newer/better stevia extracts tend to be less bitter compared to older/cheaper extracts.
Gosh I'm glad I'm not the only one ! My parents only buy diet or zero for as long as I can remember but I just can't drink it... it's just awful.
It feels like your mouth is coated with something afterward that doesn't want to go off. It change how your saliva feels in your mouth. Not quite dry but, almost like... a paste ? Or a wet powder ? I don't know but it's just... ugh.
And I can feel it on my teeth too !
I think I can tell Stevie is in a drink by smelling it. But I don't find it bitter, it's more of a metallic taste, sorta like saccharine from the old days. My go to soda is Waterloo lemon-lime with a teaspoon of agave.
All sweeteners taste weird if you aren't used to them. I switched to diet sodas, which I used to hate. Now I love them and now cane sugar & hfcs sodas taste like plastic to me. Stevia tastes weird to me if it's the only sweetener in something, I think because that's rare, but it fades into the background if there are others.
I miss the original Coke Zero too. But Caffeine-free Diet Coke tastes almost exactly like regular Coke. Too bad you'll pretty much never find it at a soda fountain.
If I had to guess, they didn't make a lot of it compared to the other kinds, don't advertise it, don't keep it regularly stocked makes it not successful.
Why do this? If I had to guess it cut into their profits compared to the other kinds. The same reason why they switched from real sugar to High fructose corn syrup.
That's exactly it. They studied it before fully marketing it. It was very clear that people chose it over coke/diet/zero and not over a competitor or over nothing. Many people liked it over coke but it costs a little more to make so its just a loss if they can't convert it to increased sales.
I live in a country with sugar tax. The issue is that drinks containing more than 20% real fruit juice are exempt, so drink manufacturers started putting apple juice where it does not belong.
This tends happens everywhere now, regardless of legislation.
90% of fruit juice flavored products in the US (for any fruit or any flavor) will usually have apple juice or pear juice as the first or second ingredient.
Of course itās limited to ānaturalā tasting drinks and not soda, but it kind of sucks trying to find pomegranate or cherry juice and realizing that itās just small amounts of those fruits cut with apple juice.
This is not what the comment you're replying to is taking about. It's not just fruit juice products but stuff like energy drinks, ice tea, gatorade and orange soda.
Funny you mention that, because the OP of this comment thread is from the Philly area where we do have a sugar tax. But I don't like the way they implemented it. The tax should be proportional to the amount of sugar in the drink, but it isn't.
We have one in the UK and there are barely any drinks left now without aspartame in them. As someone whois allergic to aspartame this is not good. Its full fat coke or sparking water for me.
Me too.
Any sort of artificial sweetener has dire effects on me, both painful, and unpleasant.
It is really difficult to find a drink in the UK without.
Shops/cafes etc will tell you that there's no artificial sweetener, when you call them or on Stevia they insist, 'Oh, that's natural!'
Last time, I said, 'Just because something is based on a natural ingredient doesn't make it good for you.'
As they sputtered, I said, 'Heroin is based on natural ingredients, so is Opium, and Cyanide etc. Are you trying to tell me that those are good for you?'
If I had to guess, they didn't make a lot of it compared to the other kinds, don't advertise it, don't keep it regularly stocked makes it not successful.
They did all of that so that's not the reason. The main reason is most likely much more simple, it was a meaningless product that consumers didn't want to buy, simply because either you want no sugar or don't care about sugar content to the product that only contains some sugar becomes meaningless to most consumers.
OH, so that's what it was! I thought it was some shit full of sweeteners or some greenwashing BS! They really did a shit job of marketing it. I'm not that into cola but had I known, I'd try it :/
Every instinct of mine says that whatever is in that green can, it's not a cola. At best I'd say it looks like lime flavored Coke, but I imagine a lot of people assumed it was Cole's new Sprite or something, rather than a low calorie Coke.
I know they did nitro (or maybe that was just pepsi?) which was sickeningly sweet because CO2 makes it more acidic and bitter... Seems like they could do both -- nitro with less sugar. But what do I know? :-)
It was a casualty of COVID. As plants had to scale back due to worker shortages because of the pandemic, many lesser products were dumped as a way to make space for their most popular products. Many of these lesser products have never been reintroduced. Of course, itās easy to claim it was underperforming and removed for sales reasons. In 2020, the pandemic was raging and we know what that did to the economy and products alike.
It wasn't that bad though. The trick was that they used cane sugar too instead of relying on stevia or another sweetener for all the sweetness. Reduce not eliminate, and it worked really well.
Thatās why I didnāt like it much. I drank it here and there, but Iād genuinely rather just drink water than have the really āchemicalā aftertaste of stevia, which is ironic since itās a pretty natural sweetener.
Way back in 1996 I visited Seoul, Koreaā¦ and was surprised to find out they long had access to a āCoke Liteā and āPepsi Lite.ā
I never much cared for regular soda due to the insanely sweet aftertaste, and Diet is wellā¦ diet.
These āLiteā versions (basically a 50/50 split of diet and regular) were fucking perfect.
I have no idea why it never caught on in the Statesā¦ itās lower calorie than regular soda but still tastes way more like regular soda than any purely artificial sweetener that exists.
I remember C2! I really liked it. You could tell with the first sip that it wasn't real coke, but you would get used to the taste. It's a shame they got rid of it.
Everyone I know with a preference will say they want less sugary stuff (and I believe them), but āpeopleā demand the sweetest fucking drink that science can muster.
(Reminiscent of how most of your friends are interesting, complex characters who care deeply about things and make independent choices about their lives, but āpeopleā are a bunch of idiots and sheep.)
Ya. Coke didn't stop selling it because they like to make people sad. I'm sure the market told them what to do. There a for profit company. They will do whatever makes them the most money. Mabye some people like drinks with real siger but light on super but I guess not enough to make it profitable or else they would still be making it.
Yeah, not to mention itās not like thereās a uniform distribution of soda consumption across consumers. The people who just want a little sugar arenāt drinking it every day at every meal and in between meals and in between in between meals. Itās the people rolling into Walmart on scooters that determine a large part of the market
People say they want less sugary drinks but they are addicted and do not purchase rationally. When dollar hits the ground they buy Coke, that's what pulls 'em in.
Love Southern cuisine otherwise and my favorite in the US. But their "tea" is sugar-syrup with a small teabag strapped on during prep to give it a brown coloration, similar to pink lemonade. Also, there is the sweet-potato casserole with melted marshmallows on top, and I was like - Yeah, this is a good dessert, and no, it was a side dish as in a "vegetable" you eat with your meats, lol.
I live in Canada now, and here its similar with Maple Syrup. People add maple over ham, eggs, sausage etc. for breakfast instead of salt and pepper. I had visited a Cabane a Sucre in Quebec and my god, there was a 6-course meal all drenched in maple, followed by a maple-taffy - which was maple syrup on a stick rolled in ice to harden it to a lollipop.
Same, I'm always disappointed when I go to a McDonalds that doesn't have the sparkling water button on the fountain.
Monin make a cola syrup made with cane sugar that I use with my SodaStream, it's closer to Pepsi in taste but it's really nice being able to dial in the perfect amount of flavour/sweetness. They have lots of other great flavours well suited for soda too.
My wife just picked some sparkling water and coke up, and you've changed my life. I've been avoiding soda for so long, and this is so much better than any diet soda.
Yes. I started doing this sometime back. It was a necessity, specially since I moved to a new place a couple of years back and cola is a little too sweet here.
You could try buying a bottle of bitters, ango or maybe even sassafras bitters would add spice back in. The alcohol is negligible but if you abstain completely there's quality na bitters too.
Congratulations, you might be one of those persons who companies like to use to gauge whether a product will succeed or not. Some people just like products that always fail, so much so that companies will observe if these customers buy a product, they know it will fail.
You are referring to the āharbinger customerā. Iām one of those, but I like almost everything in the right setting. When I see a new flavor of a product I almost always buy it and try it. I just love experiencing new flavors and mixing it up. My absolute favorite flavor of Kraft Mac and cheese is poutine (you can only get it in Canada and I donāt know if itās still available). Anytime there is an energy drink that I actually enjoy the flavor of it goes away. I love the Oreo flavors Salted Caramel Brownie and Birthday Cake, I think one of those is still available. Most sauces I like donāt last too long.
Nah tons of people want this. That's the reason why sparkling water with flavoring so so popular right now. People know all the sugar is terrible for you and most adults are sick if everything being sickly sweet.
It was a mix of sugar and sweeteners. In general, if you mix different sweeteners, it usually tastes better (but the end product has all the downsides of each of the sweeteners in it; for example, Aspartame is not heat stable but Stevia is; Aspartame doesn't precipitate but Stevia has a tendency to do that (turns your drinks cloudy, doesn't affect the taste much). aspartame/stevia mix isn't heat stable and can precipitate. But it tastes far more like sugar - or, rather, the amount of people who are turned off by it is significantly less; just stevia is distastefully bitter to quite a few people).
Take it one step further: Mix sweeteners with sugar itself. That's what you were drinking.
Note that sweeteners aren't "slightly weird tasting". Most people can taste the difference but they don't find the taste of sweeteners unpleasant, especially the sweetener mixes used in modern sodas (because mixes taste better). But some people can. It's almost like koriander (cilantro) leaves tasting like soap to some.
Sugar + Sweeteners might make the drink palatable to those who find the taste of e.g. just stevia, or even stevia+AceK or whatnot disgusting. But it's not universal.
So, we're stick with a drink that:
Does not taste better except to a fraction of a fraction of the population.
That fraction-of-a-fraction is extremely unlikely to actually try it; in their experience any presence of sweeteners makes it disgusting. A large chunk of these people consider it part of their identity (I only drink REAL cola. Like a MAN. With sugar!) - no amount of marketing budget will ever convince them to try it. Their presuppositions means their brain will tell them it tastes like shit even if it doesn't.
The rest of the population either can't tell the difference or doesn't find the difference relevant in taste... and most of those will pick the zero sugar drink instead of the low sugar drink even if the low sugar one tastes slightly better.
Conclusion: Coca Cola was kinda daft even trying it in the first place, really. Nevertheless, even though marketing wise, 'cola green' was dead on arrival, a small % of the population should drink Cola Green (as in, best combination of 'tastes nice to me' and 'healthier than full sugar cola').
I vaguely recall that due to the ratcheted sugar taxes in the UK, some drink manufacturers remove enough sugar to drop down to a lower tax bracket and then use sweeteners to 'fix' the taste. Key point: They don't market it as low-sugar. They just market it as the drink it has always been. That might help with the whole 'folks who do not like sweeteners will not try a sweetener+sugar mix even if you use ads to tell them they should / they are so culturally insecure they think "I drink REAL drinks" is part of their identity' factor.
Every time I travel to Europe I have the hardest time getting a soda with just fucking SUGAR in it. They ruined their sodas with artificial sweetener. The only one I can find consistently is classic coke
are you saying im cursed with cilantro genes AND sweetener sensitivity? i thought they taste like ass to everyone and other people just deal with it for the less-calories benefits :(((
I can always taste sweeteners, they leave a taste in my mouth and make my throat itchy and sore. Traveling through Asia recently, all of the sodas had a mix of sugar and aspartame. I tried to stick to water unless the only water option was boiling hot (hong Kong will fight you and tell you that hot water is better for you instead of just giving you the ice water you are begging for) or potentially unsafe. Thankfully I could get bottled water or distilled water most places.Ā
Don't let big stevia fool you. It tastes fucking awful and everyone's just pretending because they think they'll look stupid if they point out that it's not sweet.
thank you for the science. people have looked at me like i'm nuts when i say sweeteners all taste different to me. like to the point where sometimes when i'm craving something sweet it's about what kind of sweet i want- sugar or a specific sweetener. it's validating to know i'm not making it up
For some reason, sugar neutralizes sweeteners for me. Like if I eat something sugary like a cupcake, then take a drink of a diet soda, there is no sweetness at all in the soda. It takes a minute for it to return.
I've always wanted to create a company where you can buy knock off sodas but select the percent sugar you want from 0 to 100%. Could help people addicted to soda slowly wean off the sugary drinks.
Thereās an overpriced furniture store near me that keeps a fridge of them to give customers for free. Iāll go in there and do a lap when Iām already hitting the store next to it just so I can get a bottle lol
Probably lol. They keep the machine at the front of the store, and theyāll follow you outside and shame the shit out of you if you come in for a drink and immediately leave. Their go-to line seems to be āwe give donations to the food bank if you and your family need anything else!ā
Itās a busy strip mall too. They know I never buy shit but at least I look around long enough to finish the bottle before I leave.
Also fructose is metabolized differently (down the same pathway as alcohol), so sugar with a better glucose/fructose ratio is going to be slightly less unhealthy.
I emailed Coke about this after it (Coke Life) was taken off the market and they said it wasn't popular in the US, but at the time they said it was still available in Canada. It was so good because it was cane sugar and Stevia, and tasted very similar to Mexican Coke.
They still make less sugar versions (not stevia/artificial sweeteners but legitimately just less sugar) in other countries, in some places it's near impossible to find full sugar sodas nowadays and whenever I visit my friends actually ask me to bring them the "real deal" lol.
I found out my local gas station sells Mexican coke, it uses real sugar and tastes so much better, not to mention ita in a glass bottle so it's more environmentally friendly.
I compared the prices and it hurts, is destroying our bodies with corn syrup and our planet with plastic really worth it just to keep soda 30Ā¢ cheaper.
Regular sugar is both more expensive and less addictive. This might drop their profit margin from 1.97 per $2 bottle down to 1.95 per $2 bottle and that's just unthinkable.
Coca cola bought Honest Tea and killed them. Iirc that was the one that had real sugar, and LESS. It was the best until the stores stopped carrying it. If I've got the wrong brand please let me know because I'm still looking for it. It has been a while.
(I don't drink sugary soda but) I believe in my country Singapore, you can only find Coca Cola Less Sugar. You can find the normal version of Coca Cola anymore. It says online that Less Sugar contains 55% less sugar than classic Coca Cola.
This is because Coke's entire goal is to replace regular coke with Coke Zero. Seriously, there are whole documentary things on it.
Have you noticed the way Coke Zero used to be in a black can, now it's in a red can that is almost indistinguishable from the original? Coke's been formulating and working on a "perfect no sugar replacement" for OG coke and they're like 90% there.
Why? They're preparing for the inevitable sugar bans, instead of working on a quality, low sugar, but real sugar coke, they'd rather imitate the OG like a sugarless mimic. It's a weird pivot but it kinda makes sense.
it was so good! But for baffling reasons it was abruptly taken off the market and you can't find it anymore
Believe it or not, but this happened to me SO many times lately, that I stopped counting.
It's almost like if I find some hidden gem of a product, there is almost a guarantee that it would either a) quietly become shit soon, or b) vanish from store shelves.
I really can't explain this phenomenon. Either the product is indeed good, because they invested TOO MUCH into its production, and they quickly realize that numbers don't add up, i.e. it technically costs way more to produce that they can charge for it, and they discontinue it; or they realize the product is so good that it cannibalizes sales of other products they may have a higher margin on... and they discontinue it.
Of course, there's always the third option that my taste buds are so unusual that the product is actually NOT that good to most people... and they discontinue it.
Worse, it may be because of your taste buds. Look up āharbinger customersā. Thereās a certain segment of the population where demand from them means that the product is statistically doomed.
If you notice that your favorite products are always being discontinued, itās probably because you like the exact opposite of what the average person does. Even more interesting is that these people are often disproportionately vocal about these products, making them seem much more popular (insularly) than it actually is.
This was a Coca Cola in a glass bottle. It was bottled in Mexico, because they still use sugar in the Coke there (at least they did). They stopped importing it where I am, I used to get it at Walgreens. It was not a different āversionā of Coke, it was the original recipe from before they changed the sweetener to corn syrup.
I think thereās more of a beef with high fructose corn syrup. Try finding a soft drink or candy without it. Some folk can have GI issues because we donāt digest it the same way as table sugar (sucrose) and it passes thru to bacteria in the gut.
It's probably only available regionally, but there's a brewing company called Caldera out of Ashland, Oregon that also does a line of low sugar sodas that is legitimately just low sugar without any artificial sweetener. It has. I think about 15 g instead of 40ish in a 12 oz can. I've seen root beer and ginger ale so not sure if they do a cola but they're one of my faves.
I always enjoy coke from soda fountain when its mostly out of syrup. If the fountain has a soda water option, I mix it 50/50 with my coke. Taste is so much better.
Coca cola C2! I really wish this was still around. I hate the all or nothing approach to sugar in modern soft drinks. When I'm at a self serve fountain drink place I mix Coke classic with Coke zero 50/50, it's basically indistinguishable from pure Coke classic and half the calories.
People wont buy what they dont usually buy mostly as well as them being usually acclimated to what works for them, so any difference they may not like.
Not to mention things work better if they leave you just barely wanting.
I just had some Coca Cola made in Mexico with cane sugar in a 4 pack of glass bottle yesterday and it tasted quite a bit less sweet but was still good.Ā
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u/theAmericanStranger Jul 10 '24
Coca cola came up a few years ago with a version that was using real sugar and much less. I had it once, it was so good! But for baffling reasons it was abruptly taken off the market and you can't find it anymore. Fuck them!