[Imustaskforhelp]

I don't know but I recently drank coca cola which my brother ordered and then after a few days, I decided to drink diet coca cola because I was discussing it with my brother and he mentioned that diet and normal coke are the same price and I started wondering if there are negative effects to normal coke and not much for diet coke and they both are same price and I am drinking it for the taste, then diet coke makes the most sense so I decided to order it

Not sure if its just me though but after drinking both diet coke and normal coke the taste gap between diet coke and normal coke felt really huge to me.

You mention about Dr pepper and how strikingly similar Dr Pepper zero is, what are some other drinks which have a genuinely similar.

But now realizing this, I think that there is a difference between diet, zero and normal variants, this is the first time I am discovering this. Time to drink coke zero and coke but the winters are really cold so I might have to wait this winter season

[rafabulsing]

Can confirm, could never stand the taste of Diet Coke, but Coke Zero tastes pretty close to the original to me! To the point that I pretty much never drink regular Coke anymore, if Coke Zero is available. There's basically no downside to going with Zero, imo. And the upside of no calories is pretty great.

[plasticsoprano]

That’s because Diet Coke is not based on classic Coke. It’s based on new coke, it should really be called diet new coke. Coke Zero is based on Coca Cola classic.

[nicole_express]

It's actually the opposite-- New Coke came out after Diet Coke, and was more-or-less Diet Coke with sugar (HFCS, whatever) instead of aspartame.

But yeah it's definitely not the same as classic Coke. Also gets rid of the coca extract, I think?

[jonhohle]

If Diet Coke has a bitter taste to you (like it does to me) you may have a genetic mutation that allows aspartame to bind to both sweet and bitter taste receptors (as I understand it). For most people it only binds to sweet receptors.

[rafabulsing]

Yeah, it tastes like medicine to me.

Although to be fair, the last time I had a diet coke, I was, dunno, maybe 10? So like 20 years ago at this point. So maybe if I had some now, I'd have a different opinion. But I don't think diet coke is even sold here in Brazil anymore, It's been years since I last saw one. I was actually not aware that it was still sold in the US!

[canjobear]

Diet Coke is really the sugar free version of New Coke, now discontinued. It wasn’t meant to taste the same as Coca-Cola Classic.

[rootusrootus]

> You mention about Dr pepper and how strikingly similar Dr Pepper zero is, what are some other drinks which have a genuinely similar.

Any of the Zero variants are worth a try, in my experience. Historically I choose Coke, and for quite a while I drank Coke Zero, which is pretty good. More recently in the last year or so I've fixated on Pepsi Zero, even though I've never really been a Pepsi fan otherwise. I also like Dr Pepper Zero, as I mentioned in my first post. I've never really liked any of the diet versions of soda, they just tasted too different to me.

[epolanski]

Diet coke is much cheaper to produce, sugar is the most expensive part of coca cola by far.

[rcxdude]

IIRC, the diet versions of pepsi and coke are deliberately a bit different, while the zero ones are trying to taste the same as the regular ones.