Diet soda

Diet sodas (also diet, sugar-free, or light soft drinks, refreshments, or carbonated beverages) are sugar-free, artificially sweetened, non-alcoholic carbonated beverages generally marketed towards health-conscious people, diabetics, athletes and other people who want to lose weight or stay fit.

Contents

1 Sweetening

1.1 Cyclamates
1.2 Saccharin
1.3 Aspartame
1.4 Sucralose and acesulfame potassium; "sugar-free" sodas

2 History

3 Nomenclature

4 Reduced-calorie soda

5 Incomplete list of major diet soda brands or brands with diet versions, with sweetener

5.1 Acesulfame potassium
5.2 Aspartame
5.3 Saccharin
5.4 Sucralose
5.5 Currently Unclassified (please file)

Sweetening

As of 2004, a sugar substitute named aspartame (commonly known by the brand name NutraSweet) is usually used instead of sugar to give diet soda a sweet taste. Opinion is mixed as to the taste of these beverages: some think they lack the taste of their sugar-sweetened counterparts, others think the taste is similar. Some also note an unusual aftertaste.

Cyclamates

The first artificial sweeteners used in diet sodas were cyclamates (often synergistically with saccharin). While many say these cyclamate-sweetened sodas had a more pleasant taste than the diet sodas that followed them, in 1970 the Food and Drug Administration banned cyclamates in the United States on (some say scant) evidence that they caused cancer in lab rats. Cyclamates are still used in many countries around the world, including for diet soda. (See cyclamate.)

Saccharin

Once cyclamates were banned, American producers turned to saccharin. Saccharin alone was often criticized for having a bitter taste and "chemical" aftertaste. Some manufacturers, such as Coca-Cola with Tab, attempted to rectify this by adding a small amount of sugar. In 1977 the FDA was petitioned to ban saccharin, too, as a carcinogen, but a moratorium was placed on the ban until studies were conducted. The ban was lifted in 1991, but by that time, virtually all diet soda production had shifted to using aspartame. Perhaps the most notable holdout is Tab, which nevertheless also uses some aspartame in its formula.

Aspartame

Aspartame had the great commercial advantage of not being linked in the public mind with cancer, and by the mid-1980s, American manufacturers were switching en masse from saccharin to aspartame. The 1982 introduction of aspartame-sweetened Diet Coke accelerated this trend. Today, at least in the United States, "diet" is nearly synonymous with the use of aspartame in beverages. (See aspartame.)

Sucralose and acesulfame potassium; "sugar-free" sodas

Recently two other sweeteners, sucralose (marketed as Splenda) and Acesulfame potassium ("Sunett" or "Ace K", which is usually used in conjunction with aspartame, sucralose or saccharin rather than alone) have come into growing use, particularly by smaller beverage producers (e.g. Big Red). Diet Rite is the non-aspartame diet soda brand with the highest sales today; it uses a combination of sucralose and acesulfame potassium.

Advocates say drinks employing these sweeteners have a more natural sugar-like taste than those made just with aspartame and do not have a strong aftertaste. The newer aspartame-free drinks can also be safely consumed by phenylketonurics, because they do not contane phenylalanine. Critics say the taste is not better, merely different, or note that the long-term health risks of all or certain artificial sweeteners is unclear.

The widespread, though not universal, agreement that the newest formulations taste much more "normal" and sugar-like than the older diet sodas have prompted some producers, such as Jones Soda, to abandon the "diet" label entirely in favor of "sugar-free soda," implying that the taste is good enough to drink the soda even when not trying to lose weight. (This idea was first floated by Coca-Cola in 1987, with the tagline, "Just For the Taste of It, Diet Coke.")

In 2005, the Coca-Cola Company announced it would produce a new formulation of Diet Coke sweetened with sucralose, to be called Diet Coke with Splenda, but it would continue to produce the aspartame version as well. There were also rumors that a sugar-free version of Coca-Cola Classic, also sweetened with sucralose, was being formulated as well.

History

The beginning of the diet soda or refreshment era was in 1958, when Royal Crown Cola placed an announcement in an Atlanta newspaper announcing a diet soda product, Diet Rite. In 1963, the Coca-Cola Company joined the diet soda market with Tab, which proved to be a huge success. Tab was originally sweetened with cyclamates and saccharin.

Tab, Diet Rite, and Fresca (a grapefruit-flavored soda introduced by Coca-Cola) were about the only well-known diet refreshment on the markets until Pepsi released Diet Pepsi in the 1970s. Coca-Cola countered by releasing Diet Coke in 1983. After the release of Diet Coke, Tab took a backseat at the Coca-Cola production lines; Diet Coke could be more easily identified by consumers as associated with Coca-Cola than Tab. Also, a study was released revealing that saccharin was a possible carcinogen, leading to Coca-Cola's decision of pushing Tab's production numbers down. During the middle 1980s also, the alcohol industry began to follow lead to the refreshment industry, with some beer companies putting sugar-free beer on the market.

By the start of the 1990s, a wide array of different companies had their own diet refreshments on supermarket shelves. Tab made a comeback during the late 1990s, after new studies demonstarted that saccharin is not an important factor in the risk of cancer. Nevertheless, the Coca-Cola Company has maintained its 1984 reformulation, replacing some of the saccharin in Tab with NutraSweet.

By 2002, some soda companies had diversified to include such flavors as vanilla and lemon among their products, and diet sodas were soon begun to be produced with those flavors too (see Diet Vanilla Coke, Diet Pepsi Vanilla). By 2004, several alcohol companies had begun to release sugar-free or "diet" alcoholic products too.

Nomenclature

For cultural reasons, in some countries (Mexico, most South American countries and Nordic countries being examples), the term "light" is often used instead of "diet". The word diet in these countries typically refers to the programs given by doctors to patients who need to lose weight, and not as a way to describe food products.

Reduced-calorie soda

In an effort to cash in on the surging popularity of low-carbohydrate diets, in 2004 both Coca-Cola and Pepsico released reduced-calorie versions of their flagship sodas that contain approximately half the sugar of the regular version. The Pepsi variant, Pepsi Edge, is sweetened with sucralose and corn syrup. The sweetening of the Coke variant, C2, is a combination of corn syrup, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, and sucralose.

(It should be noted that even just half the sugar of a can of regular cola is more sugar than many people on popular low-carbohydrate diets are permitted to have in a day. It is possible that these sodas are targeted, instead, at so-called "carb-conscious consumers" who are paying attention to, but not trying to drastically reduce, their carbohydrate intake.)