- Hi, I'm Parris, and I am a reformed soda drinker.
My wife and I, when we got married,
we decided we wouldn't have soda in the house.
When we'd go out to eat,
we'd still splurge on soda sometimes,
but we didn't want to have the temptation in the house,
didn't want to have the kids develop a taste for soda.
And over the past, more than 15 years,
that has worked pretty well.
But I still like soda, especially root beer.
And wouldn't it be great if they could make a soda
that didn't have as much sugar in it,
that maybe used an artificial sweetener
that didn't have bad side effects for you,
and actually tasted good?
Let's see the progress they're making in that.
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Coca Cola, still the iconic soda.
When I visited Papua New Guinea
and traveled in the Western Highlands
where there was no electricity, no phones,
no indoor plumbing, you could still get Coca Cola.
It's everywhere in the world.
But, even Coca Cola realizes
people want a more healthful drink, and so,
this is one of their attempts to offer that.
This is Coca Cola Life.
It has sugar in it, but not as much.
And the rest of the sweetness is made up with stevia,
an artificial sweetener that hasn't been shown, yet,
to have any bad, negative side effects.
And this is Blue Sky Root Beer.
It may not be a brand that you've heard of.
I only know it because they have it
at our local Sprouts Health Food Store.
Normally I get the A&W Root Beer, but,
since they make a stevia-sweetened version
of their root beer, I wanted to compare them head-to-head
and see how it tastes.
So, the question I'm trying to answer here is,
have they improved stevia-sweetened sodas
to the point where you would say,
"Yeah, that's not bad,"
and perhaps buy that in place of the full sugar version.
Now, these two go for the exact same price.
I just picked them up over at our local Walgreen's.
$1.89 each.
However, I had to go to three stores to find this.
Now, they have it at our local supermarket in six-packs,
but to find these as singles,
I'm thinking there aren't a lot of people looking for them,
because this was kind of hard to find.
Now, I'll take a look at the list of ingredients,
and the calories and amount of sugar in each of these.
I did want to mention, though, that I have tried
Coca Cola Life once before.
When it first came out over a year ago,
they had this, to my surprise, when I was visiting Mexico
around Christmastime.
And I tried it, and no, it just wasn't doing the job
at that time.
Now, they said this is a work in progress,
Coca Cola did, that they would continue
to improve the formula,
so maybe they've improved it some in the past year,
or something.
But, the main ingredient in both of these is filtered water,
but the second ingredient in regular Coke
is high fructose corn syrup, and then the caramel coloring.
In the Coca Cola Life, it's water, then cane sugar,
then caramel color, then natural flavors,
then phosphoric acid, potassium benzoate,
da, da, da, da, caffeine.
They actually add that in.
Then, stevia leaf extract.
So, the fact that stevia is listed last in the ingredients
makes you think a little goes a long way.
It is a very powerful sweetener.
So, in this bottle,
these are both exactly the same size.
They are 20-ounce bottles.
This one has 160 calories.
This one has 240 calories.
65 grams of sugar in regular Coke.
And 40 grams of sugar in Coca Cola Life.
So, they have managed to knock off
more than 30% of the calories.
Let's see how this does compared to straight up Coca Cola.
And it is straight up.
Let's start with this one first.
Remembering the flavor.
Now, the kids hate the bubbles in soda.
Neither of them have learned to like soda.
They never ask for soda.
If they get it by mistake,
if, instead of lemonade, they're given Sprite,
they make a big face and don't want to drink it,
which is good.
But yeah, learning to enjoy that burn
as the bubbles go down your throat
and the back of your nose, that's an acquired skill
that you don't want to acquire if you don't already have it.
So, Coca Cola tastes very, very familiar.
Now, Coca Cola Life.
I'll close my eyes and have a sip of this.
It's better than I remember from a year-and-something ago.
That had a weird aftertaste, I remember that.
I'm not getting that with this.
It's getting pretty close,
pretty close in taste.
I mean, unless five minutes from now
I'm gonna get the aftertaste,
they're doing a pretty good job here.
I'm surprised.
The last time I had this, it was so different
from regular Coca Cola, you could taste that,
I don't know if it's a bitterness,
or an artificialness that the stevia had contributed to it,
but, maybe they've added some more sugar back in.
I don't know how they reformulated it,
but this is not bad.
Now, root beer, this is where
you can really use your connoisseur taste buds,
for the subtle flavors, if it's really good root beer.
I do want to mention, just drinking that amount of Coke,
and my teeth, when I scrape them together,
have that sort of, I don't know, like chalky feeling,
like a layer of enamel, or something,
has just been eroded off of them,
which may be the case.
Okay, let's compare the root beer.
Here's the Blue Sky regular root beer.
Filtered carbonated water, real sugar,
natural root beer flavor,
and caramel color from sugar,
I guess caramelized sugar,
and citric acid.
So, that's what's in this.
It has, it's a 12-ounce can.
And it has 170 calories.
Blue Sky Zero, stevia soda,
list of ingredients is,
triple filtered carbonated water, oh well.
Then, how do you pronounce this?
Erythritol.
This is a sugar alcohol.
Then, here, right at the end, stevia leaf extract,
and then citric acid.
This has zero calories.
Hmm, what's that you say?
It has zero calories when it has sugar alcohol in it.
Well, that's the thing about this.
I had to read up on it to understand it.
Apparently, sugar alcohol has, it tastes like sugar,
but the molecules are a different size,
so they don't get absorbed like sugar.
And that's why they warn you with candy,
with sodas that are sweetened with sugar alcohol,
not to have too much,
because not only will your body not absorb it,
it sort of wants to excrete it.
So, you've got to be careful with that.
So, I'll be careful with that.
So, whereas the Coke solution is a reduced sugar solution
by 30% or so, the solution of Blue Sky
is to give you a zero-calorie soda,
but to use that sugar alcohol.
Well, let's see how their root beer is.
Smells good.
Doesn't have quite the vanilla cream taste
that the A&W Root Beer has, but it's good.
Okay, sugar alcohol.
That's not the same.
Oh, is that the sugar alcohol, or the stevia?
It won't get off my tongue.
(clears throat)
Don't think they're going to have to worry
about me drinking too much of that.
Yeah, this one, the soda and the bubbles
go over your tongue, you taste the sweetness,
and then it fades away.
This one seems to cling.
Yeah, ew, oh boy.
Well, I'm surprised.
This is the opposite of what I expected
before starting this video.
Since I had tried the Coca Cola Life before
and didn't care for it,
I figured I still wouldn't like that.
But I thought with the Blue Sky using that sugar alcohol,
they'd be able to simulate the sugar taste a lot closer
than stevia.
Basically, I expected to like this and not like this,
but it's the exact opposite.
This is, in my estimation, pretty close to Coca Cola
in the smell, in the taste,
in the way it leaves your teeth feeling
like there's some enamel missing.
It has all that going on, whereas this doesn't come close.
Their zero calorie version root beer
doesn't come close to their original root beer.
So, it's good to know there actually is
a stevia-sweetened soda that has less sugar in it,
but still has a taste pretty close to the original.
To my surprise, though,
that's actually the new Coca Cola Life.
If you don't already drink soda, don't start,
even with this one I would recommend.
But, if you're already a soda drinker,
if you're already drinking a Coke every day,
you might want to give this a try.
It does reduce the sugar by 30%.
And in case you magically start losing weight
and wonder where it went,
maybe this will help.
The Magic Finder, As Seen on TV.
I'm going to be reviewing this soon.
It's a little tile you can clip onto your keys,
onto your dog, maybe onto your money,
see where it's going.
With an app on your smartphone,
you can track whatever object it's attached to.
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