I like Minute Maid 15 calorie lemonade, though I dilute it a bit because it’s a little too sweet for me. I also give a thumbs up to Canada Dry diet ginger ale. I haven’t had a sugary soft drink in years, but the last time I did, it tasted too syrupy.
I’m now trying to reduce artificially sweetened beverages from my diet. Infused water is great! Try slicing apple and peeled ginger into a pitcher of water and steep for several hours or overnight before removing fruit and ginger. Yum. Also excellent made with citrus fruit.
What about iced herbal teas? The varieties are endless - mint, ginger, lemon verbena, whatever combo you want. If you must have some sweetness, you can sweeten them with anything that works for you.
This is excellent advice. I’ve been making 1 gallon batches of sun tea that I then refrigerate, and it’s excellent. As far as I know there isn’t any kind of sugar or sweetener at all, but it still tastes sweet and fruity. The basic version of what I do uses Bigelow Orange & Spice tea. I use 12 bags in a gallon of water, 3-4 hrs. in the sun. Yummy.
A variation I do uses 12 total tea bags, but not all Orange & Spice, I’ll use 3 or 4 of these in there:
(These are awesome on their own brewed hot BTW) http://furpeaceranch.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=54&products_id=1596
100% juice is water and solids and fructose. Concentrate is less water and the same amount of fructose. Juice from concentrate is adding back water to equal what it started with. The amount of sugar never changes. Grape juice will always have more calories per ounce than Coke in the same way that coffee with two spoons of sugar will have more calories than coffee with one spoon of sugar. Grape juice is naturally more calorie dense than water and flavorings and the amount of sugar Coke uses.
To build on this – manufacturers will often reduce a fruit juice to a concentrate to make it less expensive to transport and warehouse (since taking out a bunch of the water reduces its weight, and the water can then be added back in later on).
“Not from concentrate” is a backhanded way of saying “this is how the juice was naturally constituted, and we didn’t mess with it” (implying that juice that was once in concentrate form is somehow less natural). As Exapno notes, any particular fruit juice is very likely going to have the same amount of sugar in it, whether or not it was ever in concentrate form. And, if one is looking to avoid sugar, one’s going to need to avoid fruit juices, too.
Hint water is nice. A bit expensive but not so bad if you ration them a bit. They have quite a few flavors. It’s a very mild taste and not that sweet per se but not carbonated and no sugar or artificial sweetener.
This is my go to. Strong carbonation offsets the lack of sweetness IMO. Also for a soda type drink Alley Dweller got it in one - Diet Coke Ginger Lime. The lime flavor offsets the metallic taste.
Still gonna have to try the Diet Coke Ginger Lime. One advantage of working at a grocery store is that I have easy access to all these products.
So far, the sucralose+ace-k combo seems to taste the best to me. The Mio concentrates I mentioned in my OP are sweetened with those, and there’s no aftertaste at all. If there was a cola version, I’d be set.
Speaking of ace-k, the store I work at doesn’t seem to carry it. Is it possible to buy online? I’m thinking that I could use it and some Splenda to make a delicious batch of sugarless sweet tea.
I used to have a beverage company as a client, and worked on some of their formulations with them. My recollection is that “straight” Ace-K is perceived, by most people, as having a fairly strong metallic taste to it, which is why, when it’s used as a sweetener, it’s blended with another artificial sweetener.
I’m not entirely sure why no one has yet introduced a brand of sweetener using Ace-K; it’s not a particularly new thing. My first guess would be cost – I suspect that it’s not cheap (that link above is $16.99 for a 12-ounce bag).
I struggle with finding diet drinks because I dislike most diet soda, I’m not huge on drinking plain or flavored water and i don’t like sparkling water/juice. I’ve never cared for G2 or Powerade Zero either. But I tried some of that zero sugar Gatorade after reading Snowboarder Bo’s post, in the orange flavor and it actually tasted pretty good. I want to try the glacier cherry one too. I also bought some zero sugar Kool-Aid Jammers (they come in pouches like Capri Suns), and I liked those too. I’m also a fan of Minute Maid Light Lemonade, but I can never find it at the stores. This thread came at a good time for me as starting today I’m cutting way the hell down on sugary drinks. I had been drinking far too many.
Polar seltzers are indeed fantastic, but they are also regional. AFAICT, they don’t exist outside of the northeast. They’re bottled in Worcester, MA, and don’t ship all that far. I’d never heard of them before moving to MA.
I’ve wondered that, as well. I’ve never seen straight-up Ace-K sold or offered anywhere–just as an ingredient in diet drinks. (Your Amazon link is the first I’ve seen of it.) But, even so, you’d think someone would do a premixed blend of ace-k and either sucralose or aspartame in the proportions they use in diet soft drinks. I wonder if there’s a reason other than cost. If my taste perceptions are typical, I would think it would mimic sugar better than any of the straight-up artificial sweeteners. Or maybe there’s some science-y reason why selling it as a blend wouldn’t work.
The store I work at sells it in 12-packs, and I’m on the other end of the country from MA. I’ll give them a try at some point. I’ve found in the past, though, that unsweetened sparkling waters have a sort of bitter flavor - is that the case with these?
I tried Coke Zero and the Diet Coke Ginger Lime today and they were both pretty close in flavor to the real thing. They both have a bit of that super-sweet aftertaste that sticks to the back of your throat, but I suspect I’m going to have to get used to that.
One thing to keep in mind is that the artificially sweetened drinks don’t have HFCS/sugar so they have a different mouth-feel. You lose that syrupy texture and that might be what’s coming across as an after taste. In my experience, you can acquire a taste for it after a brief period (YMMV). Personally, I’ve lost the taste for that syrupy texture, itself.
Just a bit of info on Coke Zero. It’s actually, more or less, the same formula as Classic Coke. Back in the day, Coke didn’t want to have multiple Coke flavors so they had Tab as the sugar free version. Eventually, they caved and came up with Diet Coke, which was a new formula. The Diet Coke formula was then re-released with HFCS and that’s what “New Coke” was. Coke Zero is just regular Coke but with the artificial sweetener.
While it is a diet soda, Diet Dr. Pepper is, imo, the one and only diet soda that doesnt taste like diet. I would recommend trying this if you havent already.
Why? Seeing as you are going to have to adapt to something new, why don’t you take the opportunity to get away from sugar/pretend sugar altogether? It’s doable. And getting into water will save you a LOT of money. I never “liked” water (how can anyone not like water? :D), it used to make me feel queasy, but the answer was to have it chilled/with ice. Now I guzzle it like there’s no tomorrow, and if I feel like a bit of sweet, I can do a fake soft drink with orange juice or cordial with sodastream soda, or do a flat cordial.
