Bloomberg has an interesting article today about the struggles the soda industry faces to develop new, low-calorie colas that actually taste good:
Major soda makers are desperate for a drink that tastes like the real thing, but doesn’t contain sweeteners that spook consumers.
Globally, colas account for more than half of all sodas sold. The challenge for the $187 billion soft drink industry is giving consumers in developed markets the sugary taste they want without giving them the mouthful of calories they don’t. Concerns about obesity and health have led to nine years of falling U.S. soda consumption.
The soda giants can’t rely on existing diet versions of their namesake colas, as consumers are shying away from the artificial sweeteners they contain, including aspartame. Critics have blamed the ingredients—rightly or not—for everything from weight gain to cancer. Diet Coke is losing U.S. sales at 7 percent a year, almost double the rate of decline of American cola sales overall. So Coke and Pepsi are turning to science to save their cola businesses, which take in about two-thirds of the industry’s U.S. sales. “If you can crack the perfect sweetener, that would be huge,” says Howard Telford, an analyst at researcher Euromonitor International.
Researchers are focusing on finding new sweeteners for a simple reason: That’s where almost all of a soda’s calories come from. The classic American cola is 90 percent carbonated water; the next most plentiful ingredient is calorie-laden sugar or high fructose corn syrup. A 12-ounce serving has 140 calories or more, as much as three Oreo cookies. But soda makers must tread softly when changing sweeteners, because they also help provide what food chemists call mouth-feel—the liquid’s sensation on the tongue and in the back of the throat.
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