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Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

foodscienceinstitute.com

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Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#211
post #12

I noticed a similar thing with regular Coca Cola years ago. Some PET 2 l bottles went stale and tasted terribly, like mold. Other people thought that it wasn't so bad, but did detect the bad taste after being told about it. I suspected it was an effect of sunlight on sugar, but had no way to know for sure. Nobody would admit that the bottles were transported or stored in inadequate conditions either. Then I quit regu…

I don't think its related to OP, but maybe to your experience. I have a friend that pointed out to me that Regular Coca Cola in both cans and bottles taste different between the product labeled as "Made in GB" to those that are not labeled as such, even with full UK labeling and identical ingredients. Once you pick up on it, you can tell straight away. I suspect UK cans without "Made in GB" are produced elsewhere in…

Local water, not Coke's recipe.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems there are a lot of studies where the author starts with the conviction that Aspartame is "bad", and designs a study to "prove" it. For example, "what if we give these lab rats a massively excessive dose of Aspartame every day for a year, and then check if that harmed them"

Isn't that just normal study design? Formulate a hypothesis (in this case "Aspartame bad"), design a test, find out if hypothesis was correct.

No, a good hypthosesis is "X dose of aspartame is bad", where X is in the realm of plausibility.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try https://sodastream.com . The soda can be sweetened with syrups they sell, or sweeten with anything you like, like Mangrove Honey which is salty and rich in itself. Add Scotch for a new drink called a "Southern Bee Sting". Squirt of lemon optional.

Honestly, I made my own using this[0] setup and I've never been happier. I had Sodastream before and the cost of refills and inconvenience of restocking them meant that I didn't actually use it that much. I bought some fruit extracts on Amazon, put a few mL in a 2L of water, and have delicious seltzer water without vendor lock-in. Now we need to refill our 10lb tank every few months, unless there's some leak/gasket p…

We got a Sodastream for Christmas along with a SodaMod kit which comes with three food-grade tanks with paintball fill valves. That way you can fill them at a sporting goods store for $5 instead of exchanging them for $15. Related to the article, there's something very strange about the Sodastream Diet Cola that I haven't quite put my finger on. I prefer to add some lime juice to mask the flavor.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#214
post #4

Awesome! As someone who used to drink a lot of Diet Dr. Pepper (DDP) I could easily tell how close a given can (or bottle) was to its "use by" date. This makes for a great party trick [1] but otherwise has limited utility. It also made for some socially awkward situations where, when visiting friends, they would want to have drinks on hand that their guests like and would go out of their way to get some DDP for me, n…

Try https://sodastream.com . The soda can be sweetened with syrups they sell, or sweeten with anything you like, like Mangrove Honey which is salty and rich in itself. Add Scotch for a new drink called a "Southern Bee Sting". Squirt of lemon optional.

Grohe makes a standard sink faucet with integrated carbonation/seltzer.

https://www.grohe.us/kitchen/design-trends/chilled-sparkling...

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#215

Every soft drink I’ve had since COVID have tasted off. So. If your drinks taste off, that might also be the explanation.

That's really interesting. That suggests that taste may be a calibrated sense, where signals come from multiple sensors and are 'gathered' into the final perception. Probably some of your taste buds and olfactory sensors are less sensitive after covid, or may even respond differently, producing a different mix of signals. To return to normal, I suspect the lagging sensors will need to fully revive. I wonder if there'…

I believe my kids have a similar situation. They have been really picky with food since COVID. We actually talked to a paediatrician (is that what they are called?) about it. He said it seemed to be very common right now.

Also suggested that we should try to give the kids lots of different tastes, textures, temperatures etc. I guess to “train” the sense again? I don’t know. Seems a bit unscientific. But who knows.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#216
post #106
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Methanol is toxic because it is eventually metabolized into formic acid (the same venom used by ants) which interferes with cell metabolism.[1] If the amount of formic acid is high enough, cells can't maintain homeostatis and die. Certain cells with higher metabolic demands (such as nerve cells) die first. If the dosage is below that threshold, you're fine. The FDA considers 0.5mg/kg/day of methanol to be unlikely to…

That actually made me reconsider drinking diet soda, the numbers are on the same order of magnitude I thought it would be much further apart. Is it possible that the aspartame hydrolizes in our guts after we drank it? "Disgusting drink check" wouldn't help then.

Then you'll be horrified to find out how much methanol is in a glass of wine or a beer.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tea is more than just sweetened water

I think they're referencing this, which does sound like sweetened water >I switched to water (or tea if I want caffeine) with diet sweetener in packets

And I don't sweeten just water, but I do sweeten my tea!

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does! (less water, so less hydrolysis) "name brand" syrup however isn't particularly economical at retail however[1]. Not too surprisingly there has been a rash of restaurant bankruptcies during the pandemic and so buying "used" soda fountain gear is actually pretty easy (at least in the western US) these days. I actually have an Elkay "water machine" which does carbonation (as well as chilled and not chilled stil…

One issue with those machines is the sweetener is mixed with the flavor ingredients at the fountain. That's how they fit all those flavors in a refrigerator size package. Each flavor pack is about the size of a box of mike and ikes, but there's also a "bib"(2.5 gallon bag in box)[1] of non-nutritive sweetener that's shared by all the diet flavors. Corn syrup gets routed in from a big tank in the back along with water…

Wow, why am I not surprised :-). If the normal boxes had been reasonably priced when I was pursuing this I would have gone that route. At the time the best I could do was a bit under 0.02/oz based on the 24 oz bottles or 2 liter bottles depending on sales. The places that would sell me syrup had the result coming in at 4.2 - 6 cents/oz which would have increased my costs considerably.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love soda water but the last study I read suggested it was carbonation that should be avoided. I still drink it.

Can you find the source? I doubt that carbonation is a problem.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28228348/

Carbon dioxide in carbonated beverages induces ghrelin release and increased food consumption in male rats: Implications on the onset of obesity

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