Okay, I’m admitting a weirdness here - I actually LIKE the aftertaste. In a not-caring-about-sugar attitude I grab the diet stuff cuz its got more bite.
Bubba
Disclaimer -Truth be known Bubba prefers a club soda for non-alky refreshment
I think diet vanilla Coke tastes a lot like regular vanilla Coke. Diet vanilla Pepsi is also tolerable.
According to snopes, diet Coke isn’t meant to taste like regular Coke. The folks at Coke decided to make an altogether new flavor rather than try to replicate Coke. When diet Coke sales began to rival, then exceed, Coke sales, they decided to make a sugary version of diet Coke–and they called it New Coke. And now you know… the rrrrrrrrrrrest of the story!
Of all the diet drinks, I find it to taste the most like its non-diet counterpart than any of the others.
My experience (with diet 7up and diet Sprite only) has been that it tastes weird as hell the first can. And the second. By the third, you don’t notice. I drink one or the other almost every day now and I don’t notice a thing.
Just wondering…
Most people seems to have one thing or another that they don’t like about diet sodas (for me, it’s a bitter aftertaste I get after drinking diet soda that I don’t experience with regular soda).
If the chemists finally figure out a way for any diet-soda to taste just like it’s sugered counterpart, would regular sugar-sodas disappear (on a fairly quickly time scale) and the diet sodas simply become the base line (as in, well, water)?
SirRay: I don’t think so, simply because some people like the jolt of energy they get from sugar, short-term though it may be. Sugar is, after all, a carbohydrate…
Barry
Here’s the trick I foudn to switching to diet soda:
Go cold turkey. Stop drinking ALL soda for a while. At least 3 months or so. Switch to water. Then, and only then, try the Diet. You’ll be so starving for soda of any kind, you won’t notice the difference. mmm… off to get a Diet Dew.
Actually, Dr. Pepper doesn’t taste like Dr. Pepper anymore.Few here likely remember when it actually used to taste peppery. It had a kick to it that made you gasp for air when you swigged it. It wasn’t a drink for kids back then.
Now, it just tastes like flavored sugar. Same as the rest of 'em.
I only can drink diet soda very cold, with ice. Once the stuff nears room temperature, it tastes dreadful to me.
When I make ice tea at home, I blend sugar and artificial sweetner so I have somewhat naturally sweet tea without an extremely high sugar intake. Could this be done with diet soda in some way? I could live with 40 calorie a can soda, not with 120 calorie servings.
“Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper.”
I love this slogan, and use it in my rhetorical fallacies lesson every time I cannot get out of teaching a freshman composition course. It’s perfect, because it seems to be making some extraordinary claim, but actually makes no claim whatsoever about the taste of Diet Dr. Pepper. More than what?
It’s not quite as good as the truly sublime “Don’t settle for anything less.” This claim has replaced “Don’t settle for anything else,” and is a brilliant revision. The “anything else” version implies that chosing something else is settling, and thus is making a positive claim about the quality of the product, which then can be attacked as being inaccurrate. The “anything less” seems to be saying the same thing, but actually only says that if you get something that isn’t as good–something less–you are getting something that isn’t as good–settling. The fun part is that you can honestly make this claim even if your product is demonstrably the worst in existence, and still be telling the truth.
Another favorite is the outright lie “Coming up next,” which is network tv’s way of pretending that commercials don’t exist. The interesting thing is that everyone is so familiar with this lie–viewers and programmers alike–that when the actual intent is to indicate that the following program will be starting next, a different word has to be used. If they say “next”, viewers will assume that what really comes next is commercials, so when the next thing is actually another program, they’ll say “now”. This, too, is a lie, because it will be said over the closing credits of the previous program.
When I found out I was diabetic I had to (begrudgingly) switch to diet soft drinks. Now, I can’t stand the taste of regular soft drinks (only rarely drink them when I’m having low sugars)
But Diet Pepsi is what I usually drink, Diet Rite White Grape is wonderful, Diet Barq’s root beer is the closest to it’s parent that I’ve ever tasted.
But since both Dr. Pepper and Diet Dr. Pepper taste like liquified radioactive bat guano, I’d say the commercial doesn’t lie.
I just think it’s funny that a Mountain Dew addict would describe another drink like this. 
To each his own, I guess. FTR, I love Diet DP, but I find myself warming up to other Diet sodas since I cut my sugar consumption by at least two thirds.
Oh, and Diet Giner Ale (of any brand) rocks, too!
I used to HATE diet sodas. I thought they tasted like crap.
Then I became diabetic and HAD to drink them.
After 2 weeks, I was accustomed to them. Now, if someone hands me a regular instead of a diet in drive thru, and I taste it, I spit it out. Not because I’m afraid of the sugar, but because THOSE drinks taste bad to me now. And I now LOVE the diet coke and diet dr. pepper, et al.
Here’s a ridiculous thought: try drinking some water. You know, the stuff that’s actually good for you? That we should all be drinking 7 pints a day of?
Sheesh. You say that you have a history of diabetes in your family and that you are seriously worried about getting it yourself. But the only solution you can muster is to switch to the diet version of a soda? Here’s news: nutrasweet fucks you up too!
I am seriously worried for the western world that we’re losing touch with reality. There are so many medical complaints out there that come down to basic dehydration. Your body needs WATER for its chemical reactions. Sugar-water saturated with caffeine is not an appropriate substitute.
You want to drink the pop, knock yourself out. But please PLEASE don’t come whinging to the board that the diet version ins’t good enough for you and diabetes is the inevitable result. Have some fucking willpower and have some fucking sense.
Have a good day.
pan
I appreciate your concern, really I do.
Let me just point out that I drink one can of caffeinated soda per day with my breakfast. The rest of the day, I drink water. Lots and lots of water, all day long. Nothing else but water, in fact.
I’ve had friends tell me that I should just drink coffee in the morning instead of soda. However, coffee tastes very bitter to me, and I suspect I would have to add more sugar to it than is in soda in order for it to be palatable.
Again, though, I thank you for your well-informed and completely non-judgmental concern for my well being.
Barry
Not exactly:
“In an invited review published online by the American Journal of Physiology August 8, Valtin, professor emeritus of physiology at Dartmouth Medical School, reports no supporting evidence to back this popular counsel, commonly known as “8 x 8” (for eight, eight-ounce glasses).”
Also not exactly:
“Careful peer-reviewed experiments have shown that caffeinated drinks should indeed count toward the daily fluid intake in the vast majority of persons.”
Water is water, your body can sort it out.
Water’s great and all. I drink a lot of it. But diet soda’s pretty darn close to water. (Insert old joke about making love in a canoe here.)
I could’ve sworn Cecil did a column on this, but I couldn’t find it in the archives, so I googled.
godzillatemple even if noone else here does, I aggree with you.
I remember when that nasty ass shit came out. At the time, my Papa (grandfather to the non-southerners), who was diabetic, was living with us, and because of his lack of self control, we weren’t allowed to have any sugar (et al.) in the house. When it came out and my mom saw the commercial, she said, “well my son likes the regular kind, so he will probably like this stuff, since he dispises every other diet soda”.
Needless to say, everyone in my family loved the stuff (I swear I can’t be related to them) and so they bought it by the case. They couldn’t quite grasp the fact that it tasted absolutely nothing like regular DP, unless you are comparing it to say, bovine seminal fluid. After a particularly heated argument on the subject, I even forced a taste test on them. The sick bastards couldn’t even tell which was which. I was livid.
I digress…
I only tell this story to warn you of the dangers of diet soda. Appearantly it kills any sense of taste you ever had.
Hey, no problem. That’s what makes the pit so great.
I’m off now to make myself a cup of tea, 'cos Chriseknows that’s the most healthy thing for me 
pan