4 ms·

Coke isn’t even consistent between factories, different bottle sizes and cans.

by layer8 10mo ago

piskov 10mo ago
It is true: sweetness is very different across the globe due to nation preferences
- epolanski 10mo ago
  Not just across nations, but across packaging.
- hilbert42 10mo ago
  I recall when I was a kid decades ago Coke wasn't as sweet as it is now (nowadays, I find it so sweet I no longer drink it). It would be informative if we actually knew how much sugar was in say tbe wartime Coke of the 1940s compared with that of today. I reckon the difference would startle us.
  - userbinator 10mo ago
    Probably a different type of sugar too.
    - hilbert42 10mo ago
      Yeah, likely so. Back then it was almost certainty sucrose (cane sugar), today it'll be likely fructose (from maize) or a fructose/sucrose combo. Weight for weight fructose is considerably sweeter than sucrose. Also where I am (Australia) it's always sucrose (unless fully imported) because of the large cane sugar industry in Queensland.
  - WillPostForFood 10mo ago
    The amount of sugar in Coke hasn't changed in the last 40 years, and probably longer than that. It's been consistent at ~39g/12oz, even through the "New Coke" debacle. Wouldn't be surprised if Coke in the 40s, with sugar rationing, had less sugar though.
    - 9rx 10mo ago
      > The amount of sugar in Coke hasn't changed in the last 40 years Except for when it has. e.g.: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/coke-cuts-sweetness-in-canada-to-save-calories-1.2933698 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/coke-cuts-sweetness-in-cana...
      - deleted 10mo ago
        [deleted]
      - WillPostForFood 10mo ago
        *hasn't changed in the last 40 years in the United States
    - hilbert42 10mo ago
      "The amount of sugar in Coke hasn't changed in the last 40 years,…" Likely so, but there's some evidence it's different in different markets. That's why I made my reference point the 1940s. I first tasted Coke in the late 1950s in a market outside the US and it was definitely less sweet than it is nowadays.
  - kalleboo 10mo ago
    When I was a kid I thought it was insane that my dad watered down orange juice as he thought it was too sweet. Now that I'm nearing his age at the time, I water down my cola (with plain carbonated water) since I find it too sweet. So I would chalk it up to changes in your taste over changes in the product.
    - hilbert42 10mo ago
      I too thought it was my palate and perhaps it's partially so, but it's also more than that. We're now in an era of 'engineered sweetness' to maximize sales. Since around the 1970s food manufacturers have been increasing the sweetness of products to keep up with the population's shifting/increasing "bliss point". The "bliss point" is defined as the optimal sweetness of a product and it's been increasing over time from the constant bombardment of ultra refined food products. It seems we've adapted to the ready availability of readily available sweet stuff and now we need more to satisfy. Decades ago, very sweet products weren't encountered to the same extent as today so the bliss point remained essentially static but in recent years as the average bliss point has increased manufacturers have increased the sweetness of products to compensate. There are many references to this, here's but one: https://www.foodtimes.eu/consumers-and-health/bliss-effect-ultra-processed-food/ https://www.foodtimes.eu/consumers-and-health/bliss-effect-u... Re Coke, when I was a kid, its sweetness depended to some extent on how it was obtained. Soda fountains before modern post mixing varied the radio of Coke syrup to soda which changed the perceived sweetness, also I believe in some countries the syrup came sans sugar (or largely so) to save on transport costs and was bottled (sugar ratios mixed) locally. This arrangement allowed local bottling to set the optimal bliss point for that market. I remember kids whose parents owned a soda fountain could get the syrup and we'd mix it with soda to suit. Incidentally, I'm in Australia and here the bottled Coke tastes different to what I've tasted in the US (could be sucrose versus fructose or sucrose/fructose mixtures as sucrose is usually the key sweetener used here). More to the point, I've friends in New York and several of them have complained to me that they consider their local product not up to scratch and they prefer Coke that's bottled in Mexico whenever they can get it. I cannot recall whether the Mexican Coke was sweeter or not, or if there was some other difference. Reason: whenever I ate with them they drank Coke whilst I stuck to beer.
  - StilesCrisis 10mo ago
    Our perceptions of sweet and bitter shift with age. Children crave super-sweet and shun any bitterness; as we age, sweetness becomes stronger and bitterness fades. I think you are just recognizing the shift in your tastes.
pests 10mo ago
Never liked the 20oz plastic Coke bottles. The aluminum cans and 2liter plastic tasted fine though.
- petesergeant 10mo ago
  Diet Coke only tastes right from a small plastic bottle
- rconti 10mo ago
  yeah; the product ends up tasting SUPER acidic.
hilbert42 10mo ago
That's my experience but I'm not much of a Coke drinker. I recall some years ago Pepsi making the claim they could replicate Coke to the point of it being essentially indistinguishable but that's wasn't the point, their branding required Pepsi to be clearly differentiated from Coke—commercially that seems to make sense. It's unclear how accurate Pepsi's claims are but they seemed to be based on tasting trials where people couldn't tell the 'clone' from the real thing. Seems to me Pepsi was likely right, if we consider how close this formulation is to Coke and that it was produced with limited resources then one would expect Pepsi with its huge resources to grind their 'clone' as fine as they deemed necessary. These days, Coke's 'secret' formula is more a publicity stunt than anything else.
- rmunn 10mo ago
  Some 30 years ago, someone challenged me to tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke in a blind taste test. After taking several sips, I could eventually tell that one tasted just a little bit sweeter, more sugary, and the other one tasted just a tiny bit more... "dark" is how I put it at the time. (Note that I was using that word to describe a flavor, not a color. I do not have synesthesia, that's just the best word I could find to describe the subtle taste difference). I guessed that the slightly-sweeter one was Pepsi, and I turned out to be right. Thing is, since doing that taste comparison where I alternated sips several times between the two, I've consistently been able to tell if a drink was Pepsi or Coke. So while they are very very close, they are distinguishable to some people, if those people have trained their taste buds. (Or at least they were up to about 10 years ago, I don't know if they've changed the flavor in the past decade because I practically quit drinking soda at all once I got serious about maintaining a healthy weight.)
  - mattmaroon 10mo ago
    They’re easy to distinguish and I bet if I tell you how you can do it easily afterward. Pepsi has more vanilla and lemon. If you go do a blind test now I bet you’ll find them easy to tell apart.
  - unwind 10mo ago
    True story: I was once (late 90s, I think) made part of an impromptu taste-test in a 7 Eleven store in Stockholm [1], when a (probably bored) employee grabbed a Coke, a Pepsi and a Dr Pepper and some espresso-size paper cups and made me and some friends close our eyes and try to guess which was which. I remember being upset since he claimed I failed to even point out Dr Pepper, which I still think is unbelievable since even its smell is super distinctive and way different from a cola. [1]: https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/buset-pa-kungsgatan--butiken-blev-six-seveneleven-6.3.336581.799cc38487 https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/buset-pa-kungsgatan--butiken-bl... is the same store, article (in Swedish) about a recent prank someone did there
xbmcuser 10mo ago
Even the same drink tastes a little different at different temperature or if you use a plastic straw, metal straw, glass bottle, plastic bottle.
Guestmodinfo 10mo ago
Yes my observation too that coca cola is inconsistent. I have felt that too. Also glass bottled cold drink or canned cold drinks taste much better than plastic bottled ones. My favorite is glass bottled one. But have never found a glass bottled coca cola in my region. It's a distribution issue. So I also don't agree with claims in the video. I drink coca cola 8/10 times
djtango 10mo ago
Yes - not about coke but my understanding is that Heinz invested a lot of money over the years to standardise the taste across factories, countries and tomatoes themselves. Coke itself is not consumed in a containerless 0g environment so the container itself imparts taste - hence why aficionados will often prefer glass over pastic or can. The bottling processing factory will also impart a taste, as will the local humidity which is why I often think drinks taste odd in Singapore. My fav thing I heard was back in a chemistry lab someone told me a rumour coke had invested serious R&D into a plastic/surface that tastes like lemon to accommodate for the regular plastic taste that leaches from their bottles.
- aianus 10mo ago
  Coke in Singapore is a different recipe with less sugar.
  - unwind 10mo ago
    Interesting! According to [1] it's labelled as "less sugar" though, so it's not as if the original/standard Coke is different. There seems to be some widespread thinking that Singapore has issues with sugar consumption so I guess this is Coke's response (or perhaps they were forced by authorities). [1]: https://www.coca-cola.com/sg/en/brands/coca-cola https://www.coca-cola.com/sg/en/brands/coca-cola
    - huflungdung 10mo ago
      [dead]
  - djtango 10mo ago
    TIL I actually had beer in mind for Singapore which I find somehow always tastes a bit off here...
- s1mplicissimus 10mo ago
  > Coke itself is not consumed in a containerless 0g environment so the container itself imparts taste - hence why aficionados will often prefer glass over pastic or can. The bottling processing factory will also impart a taste, as will the local humidity which is why I often think drinks taste odd in Singapore. This is 100% correct, I had to chuckle though when the thought of an actual living person considering themselves a "soda/coke afficionado" entered my mind.
slim 10mo ago
and water source has a great impact

Coke isn’t even consistent between factories, different bottle sizes and cans.

by layer8 10mo ago

Coke isn’t even consistent between factories, different bottle sizes and cans.

piskov 10mo ago

It is true: sweetness is very different across the globe due to nation preferences

epolanski 10mo ago
Not just across nations, but across packaging.
hilbert42 10mo ago
I recall when I was a kid decades ago Coke wasn't as sweet as it is now (nowadays, I find it so sweet I no longer drink it). It would be informative if we actually knew how much sugar was in say tbe wartime Coke of the 1940s compared with that of today. I reckon the difference would startle us.
- userbinator 10mo ago
  Probably a different type of sugar too.
  - hilbert42 10mo ago
    Yeah, likely so. Back then it was almost certainty sucrose (cane sugar), today it'll be likely fructose (from maize) or a fructose/sucrose combo. Weight for weight fructose is considerably sweeter than sucrose. Also where I am (Australia) it's always sucrose (unless fully imported) because of the large cane sugar industry in Queensland.
- WillPostForFood 10mo ago
  The amount of sugar in Coke hasn't changed in the last 40 years, and probably longer than that. It's been consistent at ~39g/12oz, even through the "New Coke" debacle. Wouldn't be surprised if Coke in the 40s, with sugar rationing, had less sugar though.
  - 9rx 10mo ago
    > The amount of sugar in Coke hasn't changed in the last 40 years Except for when it has. e.g.: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/coke-cuts-sweetness-in-canada-to-save-calories-1.2933698 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/coke-cuts-sweetness-in-cana...
    - deleted 10mo ago
      [deleted]
    - WillPostForFood 10mo ago
      *hasn't changed in the last 40 years in the United States
  - hilbert42 10mo ago
    "The amount of sugar in Coke hasn't changed in the last 40 years,…" Likely so, but there's some evidence it's different in different markets. That's why I made my reference point the 1940s. I first tasted Coke in the late 1950s in a market outside the US and it was definitely less sweet than it is nowadays.
- kalleboo 10mo ago
  When I was a kid I thought it was insane that my dad watered down orange juice as he thought it was too sweet. Now that I'm nearing his age at the time, I water down my cola (with plain carbonated water) since I find it too sweet. So I would chalk it up to changes in your taste over changes in the product.
  - hilbert42 10mo ago
    I too thought it was my palate and perhaps it's partially so, but it's also more than that. We're now in an era of 'engineered sweetness' to maximize sales. Since around the 1970s food manufacturers have been increasing the sweetness of products to keep up with the population's shifting/increasing "bliss point". The "bliss point" is defined as the optimal sweetness of a product and it's been increasing over time from the constant bombardment of ultra refined food products. It seems we've adapted to the ready availability of readily available sweet stuff and now we need more to satisfy. Decades ago, very sweet products weren't encountered to the same extent as today so the bliss point remained essentially static but in recent years as the average bliss point has increased manufacturers have increased the sweetness of products to compensate. There are many references to this, here's but one: https://www.foodtimes.eu/consumers-and-health/bliss-effect-ultra-processed-food/ https://www.foodtimes.eu/consumers-and-health/bliss-effect-u... Re Coke, when I was a kid, its sweetness depended to some extent on how it was obtained. Soda fountains before modern post mixing varied the radio of Coke syrup to soda which changed the perceived sweetness, also I believe in some countries the syrup came sans sugar (or largely so) to save on transport costs and was bottled (sugar ratios mixed) locally. This arrangement allowed local bottling to set the optimal bliss point for that market. I remember kids whose parents owned a soda fountain could get the syrup and we'd mix it with soda to suit. Incidentally, I'm in Australia and here the bottled Coke tastes different to what I've tasted in the US (could be sucrose versus fructose or sucrose/fructose mixtures as sucrose is usually the key sweetener used here). More to the point, I've friends in New York and several of them have complained to me that they consider their local product not up to scratch and they prefer Coke that's bottled in Mexico whenever they can get it. I cannot recall whether the Mexican Coke was sweeter or not, or if there was some other difference. Reason: whenever I ate with them they drank Coke whilst I stuck to beer.
- StilesCrisis 10mo ago
  Our perceptions of sweet and bitter shift with age. Children crave super-sweet and shun any bitterness; as we age, sweetness becomes stronger and bitterness fades. I think you are just recognizing the shift in your tastes.

pests 10mo ago

Never liked the 20oz plastic Coke bottles. The aluminum cans and 2liter plastic tasted fine though.

petesergeant 10mo ago
Diet Coke only tastes right from a small plastic bottle
rconti 10mo ago
yeah; the product ends up tasting SUPER acidic.

hilbert42 10mo ago

That's my experience but I'm not much of a Coke drinker. I recall some years ago Pepsi making the claim they could replicate Coke to the point of it being essentially indistinguishable but that's wasn't the point, their branding required Pepsi to be clearly differentiated from Coke—commercially that seems to make sense. It's unclear how accurate Pepsi's claims are but they seemed to be based on tasting trials where people couldn't tell the 'clone' from the real thing. Seems to me Pepsi was likely right, if we consider how close this formulation is to Coke and that it was produced with limited resources then one would expect Pepsi with its huge resources to grind their 'clone' as fine as they deemed necessary. These days, Coke's 'secret' formula is more a publicity stunt than anything else.

rmunn 10mo ago
Some 30 years ago, someone challenged me to tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke in a blind taste test. After taking several sips, I could eventually tell that one tasted just a little bit sweeter, more sugary, and the other one tasted just a tiny bit more... "dark" is how I put it at the time. (Note that I was using that word to describe a flavor, not a color. I do not have synesthesia, that's just the best word I could find to describe the subtle taste difference). I guessed that the slightly-sweeter one was Pepsi, and I turned out to be right. Thing is, since doing that taste comparison where I alternated sips several times between the two, I've consistently been able to tell if a drink was Pepsi or Coke. So while they are very very close, they are distinguishable to some people, if those people have trained their taste buds. (Or at least they were up to about 10 years ago, I don't know if they've changed the flavor in the past decade because I practically quit drinking soda at all once I got serious about maintaining a healthy weight.)
- mattmaroon 10mo ago
  They’re easy to distinguish and I bet if I tell you how you can do it easily afterward. Pepsi has more vanilla and lemon. If you go do a blind test now I bet you’ll find them easy to tell apart.
- unwind 10mo ago
  True story: I was once (late 90s, I think) made part of an impromptu taste-test in a 7 Eleven store in Stockholm [1], when a (probably bored) employee grabbed a Coke, a Pepsi and a Dr Pepper and some espresso-size paper cups and made me and some friends close our eyes and try to guess which was which. I remember being upset since he claimed I failed to even point out Dr Pepper, which I still think is unbelievable since even its smell is super distinctive and way different from a cola. [1]: https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/buset-pa-kungsgatan--butiken-blev-six-seveneleven-6.3.336581.799cc38487 https://www.mitti.se/nyheter/buset-pa-kungsgatan--butiken-bl... is the same store, article (in Swedish) about a recent prank someone did there

xbmcuser 10mo ago

Even the same drink tastes a little different at different temperature or if you use a plastic straw, metal straw, glass bottle, plastic bottle.

Guestmodinfo 10mo ago

Yes my observation too that coca cola is inconsistent. I have felt that too. Also glass bottled cold drink or canned cold drinks taste much better than plastic bottled ones. My favorite is glass bottled one. But have never found a glass bottled coca cola in my region. It's a distribution issue. So I also don't agree with claims in the video. I drink coca cola 8/10 times

djtango 10mo ago

Yes - not about coke but my understanding is that Heinz invested a lot of money over the years to standardise the taste across factories, countries and tomatoes themselves. Coke itself is not consumed in a containerless 0g environment so the container itself imparts taste - hence why aficionados will often prefer glass over pastic or can. The bottling processing factory will also impart a taste, as will the local humidity which is why I often think drinks taste odd in Singapore. My fav thing I heard was back in a chemistry lab someone told me a rumour coke had invested serious R&D into a plastic/surface that tastes like lemon to accommodate for the regular plastic taste that leaches from their bottles.

aianus 10mo ago
Coke in Singapore is a different recipe with less sugar.
- unwind 10mo ago
  Interesting! According to [1] it's labelled as "less sugar" though, so it's not as if the original/standard Coke is different. There seems to be some widespread thinking that Singapore has issues with sugar consumption so I guess this is Coke's response (or perhaps they were forced by authorities). [1]: https://www.coca-cola.com/sg/en/brands/coca-cola https://www.coca-cola.com/sg/en/brands/coca-cola
  - huflungdung 10mo ago
    [dead]
- djtango 10mo ago
  TIL I actually had beer in mind for Singapore which I find somehow always tastes a bit off here...
s1mplicissimus 10mo ago
> Coke itself is not consumed in a containerless 0g environment so the container itself imparts taste - hence why aficionados will often prefer glass over pastic or can. The bottling processing factory will also impart a taste, as will the local humidity which is why I often think drinks taste odd in Singapore. This is 100% correct, I had to chuckle though when the thought of an actual living person considering themselves a "soda/coke afficionado" entered my mind.

slim 10mo ago

and water source has a great impact