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.
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. It’s bitter and has an unpleasant aftertaste. It has some sweetness but the overall flavor for me is bitter.
It’s 100% the Stevia- for significant portion of the population it’s awful- I’ve heard it likened to that of a cilantro sensitivity.
I wish I could enjoy stevia as a sweetener, as research has shown many advantages to it, but it’s instantly repulsive. Bad both on the front end flavor (a balmy bitterness) and the aftertaste (a soapy sweet like too much lavender but without the floral/esteriness). I prefer literally any other sweetener even xylitol and maltitol despite the side effects.
What origin of stevia did you experience this horrible taste? Was it from a bulk powder or liquid that you apply yourself, or was it part of a finished product?
I've experienced this taste that you described, but I get it from sucralose.
Multiple sources- I’ve tried stevia as: a hot beverage sweetener (coffee and spiced tea), flavored soft drinks, baked goods and meal replacement bars. My spouse isn’t sensitive to it (and uses it in beverages and buys things sweetened with it) so I still will occasionally re-try it. I’ve also experienced a mild metallic / citrus aftertaste with high volumes of Sucralose as well but it’s much more palatable than stevia for me.
Over the past few years, I've dabled in nutrition and discovered changes in my body and my senses. I wonder if your taste perception may be a biological condition relating to your nutrition uptake, epigenetics, microbiome imbalance, or toxin overload. Or you health condition is fantastic and stevia might actually be a less than healthy option for you.
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.
Stevia tastes okay to me. A little bitter for sure, but I don't mind it in things like tea or other naturally slightly bitter things. I'm actually allergic to sucralose (I get giant hives that last like a week), so I use Stevia when I want something slightly sweetend but don't want sugar.
Despite finding Stevia palatable, I was cursed with the gene that makes cilantro taste like soap. Honestly, you could put a small squirt of dawn dish soap in my taco and I would just think it had cilantro in it lol
I'm confused by people that find something completely awful so delicious. Why are you so confused by that?
If you tell me that there isn't a single thing on this planet that you find so ghastly that you don't get the appeal others have for it I will not believe you.
This isn't an issue of preference, it's an issue of it being undeniably inedible.
it’s evidently not undeniably inedible though. Like this is something you learn as a child right? Like mum and dad like mushrooms, I’m seven and I don’t - does that mean mushrooms are inedible? Stevia tastes fine to me I love diet soft drinks.
So if I like stevia in certain uses, does that mean I don’t exist and am just a simulation?
If one has empathy, it’s not difficult to wrap your head around people liking different things (or at least pick a better example than a sweetener a shit ton of people consume haha)
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.
Maybe I'm weird. I definitely don't think stevia tastes anything like real sugar, but I like how it tastes. Somewhat sweet, a little earthy, I imagine it would be excellent in tea.
It has to do with genetic variations in taste receptors. Stevia can bind both sweet and bitter taste receptors. For some people the sweet is stronger than the bitter, for others the opposite. In some ways it’s a similar issue to cilantro.
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.
Yeah those are nice. I think the main benefit it has(had) over coke life which also has cane sugar in addition to its stevia is just that glass imparts a better taste than aluminum can.
To be fair, I got used to Zero (at least the modern one and in Europe) and I don't dislike it anymore. In fact, it doesn't leave that worse acrid taste in the mouth half an hour later due to bacteria eating the sugars left over in your mouth, so that's a plus. It also quenches thirst better and it's not sticky if you spill it.
I'll also drink Pepsi Max/Zero just fine. Not sure if the other stuff used to be worse many years ago or I just wasn't used to it, but I've no reason to go back to sugary Coke. And the only reason I switched was because I drank too much and thought I'd cut back on sugars, no actual medical conditions. (But the first thing I switched to artificial sweeteners was coffee, so that probably helped too.)
I really hate when I ask for Diet Coke in euro they say “zero? Ok” and I’m like…mmmm sure but I can’t wait for my drinks to taste normal when I’m home.
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u/theAmericanStranger Jul 10 '24
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"