As a kid, Diet Coke was all my mom ever bought, so I spent years getting used to it.
I dont drink much soda anymore, but it seems the last few times I’ve had a can of Diet Coke, it’s just not good. It seems more bland than ever before. I don’t seem to dislike any other sodas more than I used to.
Anyone else notice this?
I found this article by a food scientist basically asking the same question.
The gist of it is that Diet Coke’s recipe has not changed at all. Coke wouldn’t dare take a chance like that again after the disaster that was New Coke. But there are many factors that can affect your perception of flavors, including the type of container, temperature, and other things you eat or drink.
Thanks for sharing! That was an interesting read.
Still seems odd that they were wondering the same thing around the same time I started noticing it. Even if there was no official recipe change, I wonder if there could have been a batch that didn’t have the right syrup/water ratio.
I was actually surprised by how recent the article happened to be.
I was curious and looked it up because I had a similar thought about Pepsi recently, but I figured I don’t drink it often enough that I could trust my palate about the taste being off.
This may sound weird, but blow the top before the first sip. The cans are under pressure, so there might still be some CO2 gas in the top of the can
No blow, no show
If you haven’t had any for a while, your palate may have changed.
It’s possible. That’s why I’m asking. If nobody else thinks so, then it must just be a me thing. 🤷🏻♂️
I stopped drinking soda regularly decades ago and went through the same thing, drinks I once enjoyed were now either “meh” or way too sweet and acidic to be able stomach more than a few ounces. Cutting out soda also meant cutting out a lot of artificial sweeteners (because I was never very picky about diet or not, I just wanted the bubbly sweet. That meant that when I did try diet sodas after having quit for some time, they tasted even worse or sometimes even made me feel worse. This is all anecdotal obviously, but it seems like you’re experiencing something similar. It’s not just you. There’s nothing wrong with you.
It seems more bland than ever before.
https://www.amazon.com/Diet-Coke-Bag-Fountain-Syrup/dp/B0042RROR4
You can add some of that to your can after opening it to jazz it up a bit.
$160?!? We paid about $40 a piece when I was ordering for the restaurant I managed, but that was about 20 years ago.
Amazon is doing some markup, but there’s also been a bunch of price increases. 5gal BIBs are over $100 now.
It’s still pretty cheap when you consider that that BIB produces 35 gallons of soda.
check if they’re expired
That was my thought on the first one that seemed off, but I’ve had others from different sources that were the same way, and it’s unlikely they’d ALL be expired , but I’ll have to start paying closer attention to the dates and see if there’s something to that.
Possibly Long COVID symptoms? I remember reading a few years ago about scented candles (or something like that) suddenly getting review-bombed by people complaining that they weren’t scented much, if at all.
