I was in Tesco yesterday grabbing a meal deal, and when I was choosing my drink I suddenly thought: “Why do Diet Coke and Coke Zero both exist? Aren’t they the same thing?”
I usually make myself healthy lunches by the way, but yesterday was a bit of a manic one due to road closures on the way to child care locations. Anyway, I digress.
As I sat there at lunch, eating my soggy hoisin duck wrap and a mini bag of fridge raiders, I decided to look into this question, and hey presto, this mini blog post was born.
So if you have ever wondered what is the difference between Diet Coke and Coke Zero, you’re about to find out!
Diet Coke
Diet Coke was released in 1982 when all the diet trends were in fashion. If you’re old enough you will remember all the exercise videos (yes, video tapes) and fat free food products that started coming out around that time. I’m an ’84 baby, but it carried on into the 90s.
Coca Cola actually already had a diet soda called TaB. It was cola flavoured and it was the top selling diet drink in America. But it didn’t have the Coke branding, and the company felt they could sell even more with a product that did.
Diet Coke was not designed to taste exactly like regular Coke, which is why it has its own distinct flavour. It’s lighter and slightly sharper, which some people love and some people hate.
Coke Zero
Coke Zero is a much newer addition to the sugar free drinks range, first going on sale in 2005 with the specific aim of giving people a sugar free option that tasted identical to regular Coke.
For what my opinion is worth, I don’t think it tastes the same at all, but these things are subjective.
They actually rebranded it in 2016 so it is officially called Coca Cola Zero Sugar – probably to help convince everyone it tastes the same as Coca Cola when it really doesn’t 🤭 – but everyone still calls it Coke Zero.
I think it has less sweetness than regular Coke or Diet Coke, but it is definitely a cola flavoured drink.
Different Ingredients
The two drinks are both sugar free and contain practically no calories, that much is true, but they are very much different products with different recipes.
Some of the ingredients they share are:
- carbonated water
- caramel colouring
- phosphoric acid
- aspartame
- acesulfame-K
- natural flavourings
- caffeine
However, Diet Coke contains citric acid which Coke Zero does not, and Coke Zero contains sodium citrates plus an additional sweetener called enzymatically produced steviol glycosides. Which sounds delicious.
The blend of ‘natural flavourings’ in each drink is different too, but obviously, they don’t give out the exact recipe.
As for why both exist, well, it’s because Diet Coke has been around for so long it has become too iconic to replace. Remember the Diet Coke man adverts?
Now you do! 🫦
But not everyone likes it, so Coke Zero exists for people who like Coke, don’t like Diet Coke, but still want a sugar free option.
So there you go. My little Tesco epiphany has a fairly straightforward answer, but at least you don’t have to wonder about it anymore!
Oh, and I don’t recommend the meal deals. Yuk!