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How Coca-Cola won the war
- Figs 16y agoIn the future, could you please remove the #more-... anchor from the links? They jump you into the middle of the article, which is somewhat annoying.
- Ardit20 16y agoYeah sorry realised that after I posted when I tested the link but unfortunately you can not edit links apparently.
- dwwoelfel 16y agoThe following is from a blog that no longer exists, except in my Google Reader archive. Its author worked in a flavor factory that produced Coke: "I’ll explain why Pepsi sucks so bad, yet somehow manages to win taste tests. If you take Coke and Pepsi side by side in a blind test, Pepsi will win. This is because the bad taste of Pepsi cumulates from several sips (it is an aftertaste effect). So even though I hate Pepsi, I can take a sip or two and enjoy it. After half a can, I’m grossed out. Coke on the other hand tastes good no matter how much you drink, because its aftertaste is the same as its, uh… during taste. Thus, Coke is also better for mixing (who likes rum and Pepsi? Anyone?) because its taste is a constant. People who are expert tasters can tell Pepsi is garbage from sip one. But mortals like you and I fall for the trick, allowing Pepsi to claim that it wins taste tests."
- ugh 16y agoPepsi seems very dry to me – which works for wine but not exactly for sugar water. That dryness is very hard to notice if you only take a sip.
- yesimahuman 16y agoNot sure if that applies to Pepsi Max, which is awesome.
- PidGin128 16y agoAlso exists in the Internet Archive. The previous paragraph mentioned the flavoring of cassia, and the following mentioned how sugar holds the flavor. http://web.archive.org/web/20061031105033/http://theprimacyofawesome.blogsome.com/2006/07/12/coke-is-better-than-pepsi/ http://web.archive.org/web/20061031105033/http://theprimacyo...
- stcredzero 16y agoThis is a fantastic analogy for culture and media!
- axod 16y agoCoke has a horrible aftertaste IMHO. I can't drink much of it at all. Pepsi is far sweeter. Pepsi Max is the best though.
- technomancy 16y ago> Coke has a horrible aftertaste IMHO. True, but these tests were done when they still used sugar.
- petercooper 16y agoTaste is hilariously subjective. Pepsi Max tastes, to me, how cat piss smells. That said, Diet Coke is even worse.. perhaps I'm overly sensitive to artificial sweeteners in some way.
- memetichazard 16y agoI've never noticed any particular aftertaste from Coke or Pepsi, but I have noticed that with Pepsi I get that 'sickly-sweet' taste after about half a can, which I don't get with Coke.
- mattmanser 16y agoI have read before that the reason that Pepsi wins is because it is sweeter and when asked to compare two drinks people have no way to base the choice on apart from sweetness. Thus they choose pepsi. Outside of contrived taste tests though, people actually prefer the taste of coca-cola but can't quantify why.
- jerf 16y agoI think few people actually know how to taste food or drink. I'm not sure I'm one of them, since I'm having to teach myself. You have to make sure the smell of the food strongly makes it into your nose, which tends to happen only weakly by itself. The best technique I've got so far involves taking a bit, inhaling a lungfull slowly through my mouth passing through the food as much as possible, then slowly exhaling through my nose while returning to chewing, which works great except for the bit where you are "eating with your mouth open" (though it isn't gaping and nobody seems to have noticed, I still feel wrong). Pedestrian foods become good and great foods become stellar this way. Do this and almost anybody could probably tell Coke and Pepsi apart. Just take a swig from each without inhaling it, though, and you'll just get the tongue, which isn't very discriminatory at all, and you just get "sweet" and "bubbly". Do this and you'll also understand why Coke is preferable. Pepsi is guy on a viola, Coke is a string quartet. Both are frankly pretty limited in the grand scale of things, but Coke is at least complete.
- ars 16y agoNot to me. I hate the taste of coke - it tastes like acid to me. I like pepsi much better. (And I'm not talking about just a few sips.)
- old-gregg 16y agoThis doesn't explain why Coke tastes much, much better in Europe: when I'm traveling I always enjoy Coke. But when I'm back to US I tend to avoid soft drinks entirely - they all taste like gasoline here. I lived in Texas for a while and I remember people were always looking for Mexican Coke: some gas stations would stock it. It was significantly more expensive, about $2 per bottle, and indeed, it had the taste of the real thing. Could this dramatic degradation in quality be explained by HFCS alone?
- sp332 16y agoYup. Not everyone realizes how much flavor the various sweeteners add to a drink, aside from sweetness. That's one of the reasons it's so hard to develop a decent artificial sweetener - there are lots of "sweet" chemicals, but not many have a good flavor.
- antidaily 16y agosugar versus corn syrup
- stcredzero 16y agoThere's also much more awareness about flavors on the continent than in the US. The greater relative persistence of traditional food processing methods in Europe and the greater preponderance of industrialized food production in the US mean that industrial food manufacturers can simply get away with more in the US. The population here has been more conditioned to accept it. I find that much the same is true with sensitivity to micro-pulse within rhythm. A large portion of the North American public hasn't a clue such a thing exists. Heck, a lot of North Americans don't understand how to clap in time on the downbeat! (Unfortunately, you can also find the same cluelessnes in Europe pretty easily as well. The counterpart cluefulness is much easier to find there, though.)
- patio11 16y agoThere's also much more awareness about flavors on the continent than in the US. Somebody needs to write a book on how food is now essentially a method of values signaling which has some ancillary nutritional effects.
- poundy 16y agoCoca-Cola outsells Pepsi in most parts of the U.S., notable exceptions being central Appalachia, North Dakota, and Utah. In the city of Buffalo, New York, Pepsi outsells Coca-Cola by a two-to-one margin. Overall, Coca-Cola continues to outsell Pepsi in almost all areas of the world. However, exceptions include India; Saudi Arabia; Pakistan, the Dominican Republic; Guatemala the Canadian provinces of Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island; and Northern Ontario
- brunoc 16y agoHere's an interesting tidbit of canadian culture. As mentioned above in Quebec Pepsi outsells Coke by quite a bit. This is how the "peppers" nickname for Quebecers came to be. Or at least that how the legend goes.
- eli 16y agoWell, of course. There's a Pepsi bottling plant in Buffalo. I'm sure Coke outsells Pepsi by an obscene margin in Atlanta.
- joe_bleau 16y agoMy absolute favorite coke vs. pepsi taste test story is near the end of this blog post (search for "About 10 years ago I did a year long part-time course in quality assurance"): http://davesmechanicalpencils.blogspot.com/2006/11/pentel-ain-lead.html http://davesmechanicalpencils.blogspot.com/2006/11/pentel-ai...
- sjs 16y agoI used to prefer Pepsi when I was younger, and whenever I did the Pepsi challenges I could always taste the difference. I remember some of my friends couldn't distinguish them so it clearly depends on the person. Pepsi is a bit sweeter. Or was, I don't drink soft drinks very often these days.
- marcinw 16y agoI don't know what's better... the Coke vs Pepsi story in the article, or the fact that this entire website is dedicated to mechanical pencils.
- thethimble 16y agoMirror: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8Owe47LK_EkJ:www.damninteresting.com/the-american-gustation-crisis-of-1985+damninteresting+coca+cola&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8Owe47L...
- tron_carter 16y agoIn my stats class in school, I volunteered for the coke vs. pepsi blind taste test. I had to guess which was which, and I was right 9/10 trials. Teacher was a bit shocked at that, calling me an outlier.
- gaius 16y agoPepsi is sweeter. It tastes better for one mouthful, but Coke wins in the market because most people find an entire can of Pepsi too sweet.
- thereddestruby 16y agoCoke always tastes better out of a glass bottle than a can, as well.
- whakojacko 16y agoIs this really true? If so, why would it be? Ive had friends say that, but Ive only had Coke from glass that was from Mexico/Europe and hence had real sugar, which is obviously better for a completely different reason.
- dzlobin 16y agoThis is true for most things. There is a reason specific wines have specific glasses, as does beer and whisky. Taste is overwhelmingly defendant on smell, so drinking it out of a bottle where your nose is not in much contact with the aroma, and drinking it out of a glass where your nose is almost next to the drink, are two entirely different sensation. For example budweiser in a bottle/can, is very bad; almost gasoline-y like bud light, natty ice. Out of a proper glass though its much smoother and lighter tasting, not bad at all.
- aw3c2 16y agoNo. That is a matter of taste. A friend of mine prefers it out of the can.
- marcinw 16y agoI've always preferred the taste of Coke out of a can to any other cola. Pepsi is too sweet, and it has a slightly different aftertaste; Coke on the otherhand, tastes pretty consistent throughout, making it an excellent choice as a mixer. I don't know how people can like Coke out of a glass bottle though... it has always tasted too flat for me. Anyone ever notice how Subway (chain restaurant) always has a different tasting Coke than what you're used to? I could never figure out why they consistently screw up the mix.
- Revisor 16y agoIt's an interesting read from a marketing point of view, but as for our health, coke (oversweetened dilluted acid), chips (carcinogenic fried potato dough with monosodium glutamate) and sweet chocolate are the most unhealthy things one can inflict upon oneself. I have never understood some of my friends, gulping litres of coke everyday, basically drinking nothing else. I for myself prefer tap water (capital city, central Europe).
- zeynel1 16y ago'Although the foods were identical aside from their wrappings, the children said they preferred the taste of the McDonald’s-branded burgers, carrots, and apple juice in the vast majority of tests.' interesting