What Actually Makes Diet Coke “Diet”?
Diet Coke mainly gets its sweetness from aspartame, an artificial sweetener that’s about 200 times sweeter than sugar. This gives the drink the same level of sweetness with essentially no calories. Unlike Coca-Cola, Diet Coke has its own distinct recipe and it’s just the same concoction with a sugar substitute. This helps explain people are able to identify the two different drinks online when given a taste test, (same story with Coke Zero). While Coke Zero contains sodium citrate, the calorie-free older brother uses citric acid, making notable differences in taste.