About a month ago I read an article about Pepsi releasing an “All Natural” version of Pepsi Cola to the US market called Pepsi Natural. Apparently this sort of drink has been out in Europe for a while now, I believe it’s called Pepsi Raw, but it was never released in the US, until now. It seems as though more and more people are shying away from food that contains High Fructose Corn Syrup instead of real sugar as it’s apparently not that great for you. Something about the body doesn’t know how to process it so it just processes it as fat, or something along those lines. Majority of the food in the US that uses sugar, uses High Fructose Corn Syrup instead due to government subsidies and what not. So in turn America is becoming overweight (HFCS isn’t the only reason for that) and our pop (or soda if you wanna call it that) has slowly started tasting worse.
Coca-Cola has always released an “Original Formula” Coke around this time of year for Passover, since HFCS is not kosher for the Jewish religion and this year Pepsi decided to do the same. They announced a product called Pepsi Throwback (along with Mountain Dew Throwback) which go back to the original formula that contains real sugar instead of HFCS. Now I haven’t been able to find any of the Throwback labels in any stores around me yet and seeing as how it’s a limited run and Passover is already here, I would assume I’m just not looking hard enough. I was able to find the Coca-Cola Original Formula, but it only comes in 2-liter bottles. Look for the yellow cap. The Coke isn’t as special though since you can usually hunt down the original formula at some of the random mexican grocery stores in the areas. And along with the Coca-Cola I was able to find Pepsi Natural so I figured I’d give it a taste.
So I head to the grocery store to pick up a bottle of this stuff only to find out that they only sell it in packs of 4 bottles. I really only wanted one bottle because if it tastes terrible I’m not going to want to drink the other 3 bottles and it would be a complete waste of money, but I had no choice. So I bought the 4 bottles and took them home hoping to unleash the deliciousness that is Pepsi Natural. Well I can official say there was not much deliciousness to be found within that first bottle. Imagine taking a bottle of Pepsi, opening it, leaving it sit for a couple days (still open mind you), then closing it and putting it back in the fridge only to come back to it 3 months later. Yeah, that’s pretty much how it tasted.
I appreciate the fact that it did still have some of that distinct Pepsi taste that I enjoy, but since it uses sparkling water instead of carbonated water, it’s obviously “flat”, which is the first thing I noticed. I also noticed the fact that it has a very strange after taste which is less than stellar. I don’t really know how else to describe the taste of Pepsi Natural other than it tastes semi-similar to an extremely flat Pepsi. I wasn’t even able to finish the entire bottle, I ended up dumping it out. I’d take a bottle of Crystal Pepsi over this any day. So if you’re curious about trying this stuff you are probably going to be disappointed. I would recommend hunting down Pepsi Throwback and drinking that instead.
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