Cola Challenge

Before I start my carbonated beverage review, I will point out this map of where in the U.S. people call it "pop" and where they call it "soda." Though I have lived deep in "pop" territory for almost my entire life, all of my forbearers hail from "soda" territory, and I married a man from a separate "soda" zone. I have never called it "pop" and refuse to start now. This post will be about soda.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I don't particularly like colas in general. My distaste stems from one of the least amusing anecdotes that involve me vomiting (not from the cola--quite the opposite, in fact, but as I said, it is one of the least amusing of those tales). Anyhow, if I have to choose, I prefer Pepsi, but I would drink a whole lot of things before I would drink either Pepsi or Coke.

That notwithstanding, I have now tasted both Coke and Pepsi's latest efforts in the world of caramel-colored fizzy beverages: Coke C2 and Pepsi Edge. If you haven't been paying attention--and who has time to keep tabs on the cola wars these days?--both companies have rolled out "lower carb" versions of their flagship colas by using half high fructose corn syrup and half fake sugar. Pepsi uses Sucralose and Coke uses aspartame to cut out some but not all of the calories and carbs of regular soda. The result: both have managed to come up with formulations that play the corn syrup off the artificial sweeteners to enhance the most repulsive aspects of each. They have somehow created beverages that simultaneously have the overwhelming syrupiness of regular soda and roughly five times the bitter aftertaste of diet (and I like diet soda!). The main difference is that one tastes like diet corn syrup with a hint of Coke, and the other tastes like diet corn syrup with a hint of Pepsi. However, unlike the person who emailed ME over here, I did not detect the taste of either monkey or rhino urine.