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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

No calories, all natural, must taste great Soda companies chasing elusive sweet spot

By: Staff Writer

Posted: 07/30/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

NEW YORK -- Coke and Pepsi are chasing after the sweet spot: a soda with no calories, no artificial sweeteners and no funny aftertaste.

The world's top soft drink companies hope that's the elusive trifecta that will silence health concerns about soda and reverse the decline in consumption of carbonated drinks. But such a formula could be years away.

That's because the ingredient that makes soda taste good is also what packs on the pounds: high-fructose corn syrup. Artificial sweeteners like aspartame that are used in diet drinks don't have any calories but are seen as processed and fake. Natural sweeteners that come from plants present the most promising alternative, but companies haven't yet figured out how to mask their metallic aftertaste.

Despite the complexities, soft drink makers push on in their search.

"I can't say when it will be here, but it's in the reasonable future," said Al Carey, who heads the beverage unit for the Americas at PepsiCo Inc., the world's No. 2 soda maker.

There's good reason that soft drink makers are so eager to tweak their formulas. Once a beloved treat, sodas are now being blamed for the nation's bulging waistlines -- two-thirds of the country's adults are overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That, coupled with the growing variety of flavoured waters and sports drinks, has sent per capita soda consumption down 17 per cent to about 1.3 cans a day since its peak in 1998, according to data from Beverage Digest, an industry tracker.

In New York City, a ban on the sale of sugary drinks bigger than 16 ounces in restaurants, theatres and stadiums could take effect as early as March. Cambridge, Mass., proposed a similar ban last month. Richmond, Calif., voters will decide in November whether to pass the nation's first penny-per-ounce tax on soda and other sugary drinks.

Aspartame, the artificial sweetener commonly used in drinks such as Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, doesn't have any calories. But some drinkers worry that the sweeteners are not natural. Public perception has been coloured by studies suggesting it caused cancer and brain tumours in rats even though the American Cancer Society says there's no evidence showing it has any link with an increased risk for cancer in adults.

The concerns have led soft drink companies to search for natural, zero-calorie sweeteners, including stevia, which is derived from a South American shrub. Natural sweeteners have neither the calories of sugar nor the negative associations of artificial sweeteners. The trick, however, is figuring out how to make them taste good in colas.

"Every sweetener has its own notes that need to be mixed with other flavours," said Mehmood Khan, chief science officer for PepsiCo. "It's a bit like an orchestra playing music, as opposed to one instrument."

So far, stevia is the natural sweetener that has gotten the most attention and is already used in Coca-Cola and PepsiCo products, including orange juice and bottled teas. But it's proving more difficult to hide the aftertaste in colas.

Soft drink makers are testing different extracts from the stevia plant that they hope will be easier to blend. They're also scouring the world for other naturally occurring sweeteners, such as one called mogroside that is extracted from monk fruit and a derivative of a berry called miracle fruit.

Recreating the exact taste of extremely valuable brands such as Coke and Pepsi is a high-stakes game and companies don't want to rush any drinks to the market. But making a natural cola that doesn't have any calories isn't impossible.

Still, considering their enormous resources, it's likely that soda companies will eventually find a way to make natural drinks with no calories that taste good, says Mike Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

"If you look 10 years ahead, we're going to see a different marketplace for sodas," he said.

-- The Associated Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 30, 2012 D4

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