I just went to the soda machine for my ritual mid-morning Pepsi. Now, I’m one of those carb-counters, and I usually get a zero carb, zero calorie diet Pepsi. Today, they’re sold out. So I look a little lower, and see the Pepsi One. I figure, what the hell, one calorie and still no carbs, so I go for it. On the walk back to the office I’m thinking, “Hey, I’m probably burning more than that one calorie now!” But then I wonder
What have they done (and why) to add only one calorie to my Pepsi?
The ingredients are the same: Carbonated water, caramel color, aspartame, phosphoric acid, potasium benzoate, caffeine, citric acid, and natural flavors; except that the One adds artificial flavors and acesulfame potassium (and the aspartame is lower in the list). You couldn’t add artificial flavors and acesulfame potassium witout the one calorie?? One calorie worth of something is making a noticeable change in the taste??? What’s going on here???
Just a wag, but I think both have one Calorie. You’re allowed to round down to the nearest multiple of five. So one Calorie equals zero Calories. For marketing reasons, Pepsi put one instead of zero. Celery has one or two Calories, but is typically indicated as a zero Calorie food.
Yup, the side panel on the One says one calorie, and the Diet says zero. Both vae zero carbs, and the One has 30mg of sodium while the Diet has 25mg. I guess I’m confused as to why both exist. Are we (public) so vain that we would select zero over one calorie, or so stupid to believe that one calorie could make a percepible taste difference? For the record, I can taste no difference between the two.
As a rabid Pepsi One drinker, I can tell you one good reason to have Diet Pepsi and Pepsi One co-exist is that they have vastly different tastes. Certainly with Diet Pepsi the “zero calories = zero taste” theory is true IMHO. Prior to the advent of Pepsi One, I drank nothing but Diet Coke, and even that was hard because I used to drink the fully leaded colas but had to go unleaded as part of a diet my wife went on (i.e. if my wife is on a diet…then I’m on a diet). Pepsi One made my life worth living again in this cottage cheese and vegetable hell I currently live in.
I think they show the one calorie because the name of the drink is “Pepsi ONE”. They couldn’t very well call it “Pepsi Zero”, could they? I’m sure you’re drinking nothing more than a diet Pepsi with a few flavor enhancers, but Pepsi probably learned from the “New Coke” experience, that you don’t just replace the old one with a new one. You put out an entirely new product. Different name, new marketing, etc…
I think the whole thing is nothing more than a gimmick to make the public believe it’s a different drink.
Don’t think that one Calorie couldn’t make a difference in the flavor of something.
Try putting a drop of dimethyl sulfoxide in your drink. All you’re going to taste is garlic. Heck… just get this stuff on your skin, and all you’ll taste is garlic. This is just an example I can come up with off the top of my head. I’m sure that there are other more potent things out there that can affect the flavor of something in TINY quantities.
Smell and taste are closely related, and there are chemicals out there that can be detected by the nose at the parts per billion level (mercaptans for instance). I’m sure that taste can be, at least somewhat, similarly affected by certain chemicals. The trick is finding ones that taste good, and are not going to kill you.
Pepsi ONE is a low calorie cola beverage marketed towards men. (Notice the bold font and sleek sliver can…like a macho bullet – grrrr!) Diet Pepsi is a low (or in this case, NO) calorie cola beverage marketed towards women. I believe Cecil covered this in a column (I’m thinking “what’s the difference between Diet Coke and TAB?”) In a nutshell, some suit said “How can we sell more of this diet soda in a sissy pink can?” and another suit said “Let’s put it in a red and white can, like the regular Coke and sell it to men!” Same idea, although what happened in the case of Tab was that so many people prefered the taste of the Diet Coke that Tab sales were “cannibalized” to the point where it’s very hard to find today. Oddly enough, when I drink Pepsi ONE I have to chuckle, because in my opinion, it tastes like TAB, lol!
is an artificial sweetner. It does in fact add a calorie or two, but that’s it. It is 200 times sweeter than sugar, and does not promote tooth decay. Companies that use it tend to mix it with other sweetners such as aspartame (nutra sweet) or even saccharin because market research reveals that many people who drink reduced calorie beverages actually get to like that “diet taste”. Coca Cola may also introduce a product with “Ace K” (as it’s called in the industry) calling it “Coke Light”. I got this info from a client of mine, a big wig in the soft drink industry.