The Consumer’s Corner

Apart from doing dedicated reviews, I exclusively drink diet sodas. It was a habit I developed while participating in an incredibly successful diet (lost 1/3 of my body weight), but it is a habit that I have absolutely no intention to break. Dieting alone will get the weight off, but if you’re not willing to change your preexisting lifestyle, you’ll ‘find’ everything you lost, and probably a little more. I was unwilling to give up soft drinks, so I had to find some suitable replacements for my sugar packed sodas. Here we go!

• Number 5 on my list isn’t actually a ’soda,’ it’s an energy drink.  ‘Monster Low Carb.’ It’s not entirely calorie free, but it’s close enough. The taste is pleasant, I love the energy boost when needed, and it will not ‘crash’ on you like many energy drinks; simply because it lacks sugar. Very enjoyable, I buy this fairly often.

• Number 4 would be the ‘original diet soda that tastes good.’ Diet Dr. Pepper (Original). They were doing diet the right way a long time before the cola guys, and it’s still an excellent drink. One very convenient thing about Diet Dr. Pepper is that it can be found in a lot of soda fountains; in fact it’s the only one on this this that you’ll be able to find with any regularity. If you’re a sugar sweetened Pepper drinker looking to make the switch, this should be a fairly smooth transition for you.

• Number 3 is doing the Dew! Just with low/no calories. Reformulated a while back to include a better blend of artificial sweeteners, Diet Mountain Dew has found a near permanent placement in my refrigerator. The taste is a bit ‘different’ than regular Dew, but after sucking down a few cases of the diet version, I was unable to go back to the corn syrup version. Light, crisp, and it still gives you a nice pick-me-up.

• Number 2 is the latest to be released, and is in the middle of a huge marketing push by Pepsi. Diet Pepsi Max was introduced last year, mainly as a worthy opponent to the number one on my list. The blend of aspartame and Ace-k sweeteners tastes great, and the extra caffeine and ginseng give it a great punch. I’ve had non-diet drinkers accidentally grab these out of my fridge, and never notice they were no calorie colas. That says a lot.

And the winner is……..

• Number 1 Coke Zero. Easily the best replication of it’s ‘parent soda,’ Coke Zero is an amazing product. The fact that anyone still drinks ‘Diet Coke’ amazes me, it simply cannot compare to Coke Zero at all. You’ve seen the goofy ads about ‘taste infringement,’ but word of mouth and taste testing is what will sell this product. If you’ve yet to try it, I suggest buying a 20 oz at your earliest convenience.

Use the comments, agree and disagree with me, and don’t forget to leave your own Top 5. Or 10. Whatever you like

–Jeremy Hobbs

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 27th, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Diet Products, Soda. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.