A LIttle Too Cold.

If you like soft drinks, you presumably like them cold.  But you don't want them too cold.  At noon today I bought a couple of donuts from Safeway at the Mall at Lawson Heights.  I then went outside to buy a Coke Zero from a vending machine they have sitting outside, since it's 40 cents cheaper than buying a bottle in the Safeway.  But when I went back into the mall to eat and drink I found a bit of a surprise.  The Coke Zero was half frozen.  The frozen bit had a texture close to that of a Slurpy.  In retrospect I should have considered that there might be some ice in it, given that it's -10 C during the day.  I suspect the soft drinks inside might end up totally frozen when it gets even colder.

Caffeine, Ugh!

I really need to stop drinking the damn crap.  It seems to get me hyped up in a bad way much of the time after I drink it.  And I'm drinking it in Coke Zero, not cofffee, so I can only imagine the effect it would have if I did drink coffee.  Coming off the stuff is annoying, but I'm sure I could do it.  Time to kick up the will power a bit I guess.

Designs.

There are many considerations when selling a product.  One of the important ones is the design of the packaging.



In recent years soft drinks have been offered in Canada in cans like those above.  These squat little things contain 237 millilitres of product each.



When I went to buy some groceries yesterday I decided to buy some Coke Zero.  When I came to the pop isle I found that the small can format had changed to the one above, as it has for other Coke brand products.  It's taller than the previous format, which was the same 237 millilitre package as the Pepsi cans above.  But if you look at the picture carefully you'll see that the can actually contains less than the old version. It contains 222 millilitres of beverage, 15 less than the squatter format.

I doubt the new format was intended solely to reduce the amount of product.  Given that part of the reason for this size of pop is to appeal to those on diets it wouldn't surprise me if they hope to encourage purchases by making people subconciously associate drinking that size with getting slimmer.  They might also be hoping to attract customers who like energy drinks like Red Bull, which come in similar slim cans.  But whatever the other reasons they've also apparently decided to use the change to increase their profit margin.  I have no idea how much 15 millilitres of Coke Zero or any other soft drink costs to make.  But if you make a tenth of a cent or whatever per can versus the 237 ml size while selling it at the same price it will quickly add up.

More Diet Pop Musings.

As a followup to my post on Coke Zero here's a post from the Omni Brain blog on Scienceblogs on why diet soda may taste like crap. I'm not entirely convinced, although I suppose the comments I made could in part reflect a difference in "mouth feel" between Coke Zero and regular Coke. It's also interesting to read the comments about different sugar products being used in Coke in different locations. I knew about the Mexican variation, but it seems Canadian Coke may be different as well from American Coke.

Zero For Zero.

This afternoon I did something I had sort of thought about doing for a good while, trying a can of Coke Zero. My verdict? Thumbs down. The can has a line on it about "real Coke taste," and while it's closer than Diet Coke it still doesn't taste the same as a regular Coke. There's too much Aspertame flavour to it still, and overall the taste of the can I had made me think a bit of the taste of Coke that's sat in an opened bottle in the fridge for too long. Of course as I've mentioned elsewhere, although not here I think, regular Coke canned elsewhere tastes different to me than the stuff canned here, so if you live elsewhere you might think Coke Zero tastes a bit closer.