I used to be a big Pepsi drinker, until I accepted that I was a big Pepsi drinker. Mostly eliminating sodas from my diet made me lose a fair bit of weight. I still have one a couple times a month, when the wife and I go on a date, but after awhile I just stopped missing the taste, as my body was presumably weaned off the sugar addiction. Eventually I started avoiding things that were sugary, because now if I eat too much sweets it makes me feel ill.
Im still a big guy, but my weight is slowly trending downwards, and I feel better now than I ever did before. It’s funny, they tell you that sugar is close to pure energy for the the body, but once I cut back on it I found I had more energy than I did before. I even started running last year.
Anyway, the point of my rambling is to tell you all that they’re all pretty much poison, no matter the brand, and you’ll start feeling better if you stop drinking them at all. If I could do it, so can you, and you’ll thank yourself later. I promise.
There’s a funny anecdote from Professor Ian Roberts that he tells at the launch for his book “The Energy Glut”.
He was approached by coca cola to carry out a study for them and they even suggested they would write the proposal for him so they could work together.
He suggested his own proposal that he research the road deaths and injuries attributed to transporting their nutritionally valueless sugary drink around the world.
He didn’t hear back from them!
When I was in high school in the 90’s, we had a soda machine that was owned by the school, and had all the different brands - Coke, Pepsi, RC, etc.
One year, they took out the old, independent machines and replaced them with Pepsi machines that were owned by either Pepsi Co or some nameless vendor. They only contained Pepsi brand products - Pepsi, Mountain Dew, etc.
At first we were annoyed, but eventually… I’m now a Pepsi guy for life. I drastically prefer it to Coke or anything else.
At the time, their ad slogan was “The Choice of a New Generation” - And they ensured that by making contracts favorable to school district’s bottom lines in a successful attempt to groom me into being a Pepsi guy.
And it worked. I was groomed, and I still abide by my programming to this day, even while being fully aware of it.
If you think you’re immune to corporate programming because you’re aware of it and are a skeptic at heart - you aren’t.
I honestly think people who prefer one over the other would not be able to tell them apart in a blind test.
Many people don’t have a good pallet, but it’s pretty easy to tell the difference via the texture. Pepsi is a bit more syrupy, and sweeter, whereas coke is a more bitter-sweet taste. Both are absolutely carb bombs, but as soon as you spend just a little time comparing the tastes of the two, you can pick out their distinct flavor notes easily. I’m only comparing the shitty HFCS beverages in America which both coke and pepsi use. Cane Sugar Pepsi, vs Cane Sugar Coke I’m not so sure about. I do prefer Can Sugar Coke (i.e. mexican coke) over HFCS. I haven’t had a cane sugar pepsi in years.
