When I was 17, my mother opened a restaurant, and I worked there many hours a week. Needless to say, being around all that food continuously led to some weight gain. At that time, Tab was the diet drink, but I just could not handle the bitter, unsweet taste of it. I stuck with regular Coke and prayed that the scientific community would develop a better diet drink. My prayer’s were answered a short time later with the introduction of Nutrasweet.
I really didn’t expect the new Diet Coke to taste much better than Tab, but I gamely gave it a shot. Talk about the difference between night and day! I liked Diet Coke from the first time I tasted it, and didn’t miss regular Coke in the least. In fact, I quickly discovered that regular Coke tasted much to syrupy and sweet after switching to Diet Coke. Diet Coke and regular Coke are made from a recipe that is as closely guarded as the crown jewels of England. It’s a deep, rich brown, studded with millions of carbonated bubbles. Too many bubbles, at times, as Coke is well-known for fizzing up and over the rim of your glass if you don’t exercise extreme caution when pouring it!
The Pepsi products have a similar taste, and will do if you’re having a cola emergency, but to me, Pepsi lacks the robust flavor of Coke, tasting slightly ’’flatter’’. Coke is available in many sizes, 12 ounce cans, 1 liter bottles, two liter bottles, three liter bottles, and 20 ounce bottles. The Coke products are wildly expensive, unless you can get them on sale. The normal price for a 3 liter bottle is $1.99 (US), a 2 liter is $1.29, and a 6 pack of cans is around $3.99. Some WalMart stores carry the two liter bottles, and price them at .88 cents each, a great savings. Two added benefits of a diet cola are that kids can drink it without getting that ’’sugar rush’’, though you may want to purchase the caffeine free version, and a spill is easy to clean up, since there’s no sugar to leave a sticky residue. If you’ve ever spilled regular Coke on your keyboard, you’ll appreciate this difference.
I much prefer ’’real’’ Diet Coke, but if it’s not on sale, I’ll buy a store brand of diet cola. I’ve found that the Sam’s Choice at WalMart and the Dollar General Store brands closely mimic the real product. Shasta diet cola is widely available everywhere, but its taste and quality can very widely from batch to batch. I finally gave up completely on Shasta.
Here’s a little known fact about Nutrasweet (aspartame) products. Nutrasweet breaks down quickly in warm temperatures, which is why you can’t use it for baking. The same thing will happen to your treasured bottle of diet cola if you leave it in a car or uncooled room in the warmer months. It’s not uncommon to purchase a new bottle of a diet drink and open it, only to discover it is bitter and undrinkable. Just return it to the store and exchange it. Chances are good that the cola was stored in a warm warehouse for too long.