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What Does It Taste Like, Anyway?

On Saturday morning, February 18, 2006, I poured a glass of Diet Mountain Dew, as I've done daily since the summer of 1987. Finding the taste very odd, I took a look at the bottle to see if it was past its freshness date. "Tuned Up Taste," I saw.

Uh-oh.

Taking a closer look at the bottle, I spotted sucralose in the ingredients list. And thus ended (temporarily, I hope) the deepest, most committed relationship I have ever had with a consumer product. I've poured more than 5,400 gallons of Diet Mountain Dew down my gullet in my life, and parted with more than $20,000 to do it. To say that I view the formula change as an affront is an understatement. This is my own (and many others' own) new Coke fiasco.

Unambiguously, it is sweeter, but it is hardly a pleasant sweetness. It reminds me far more of the sweetness of the fluoride treatment at the dentist's office, or of what I always imagined antifreeze would taste like. It is obscenely artificial, offensively pervasive, and borderline nauseating. I've also seen in others' accounts that it increases, rather than quenches, thirst; that its salty aftertaste is long-lasting; and even that it upsets an empty stomach.

A big part of what made the previous Diet Mountain Dew formula so marvelous is that it never "grated" on your taste buds. It always tasted good, any time of the day or night and no matter how much you'd already consumed that day. Indeed, it was even pleasant to be relieved of making any decisions at the grocery or convenience store. Grab a Diet Dew; no need to think about it. Now I'm forced to look for "Tuned Up Taste" on the label, and not pick it up if I see it. Grrrrr.

'Course, that begs the question: what do I drink now if not Diet Dew? Well, from late fall to early spring I've had a couple of cups of black coffee a day for many years now. And I've been doing that, but it's been more like three or four cups. For soft drinks, I'm having to hop around, as nothing else out there has old Diet Dew's enduring drinkability. I've been doing Diet Dr Pepper for the past couple of weeks, but I'm tired of it. Probably go to Diet Coke next. After that, perhaps Diet Sun-drop will make an appearance. After that, I'm just not sure.

Why are you doing this to me, PepsiCo?

You can bet I won't step into the PepsiCo family at any point looking for a substitute. I can't reward them, however minimally, for their lamebrained move with my Diet Mountain Dew. As I remember someone commenting during the new Coke fiasco of more than twenty years ago, "it's as if I had awakened and God had made the grass purple."

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