Beyond Tab

Think of it as Wordle. Except with just 4 letters. And it’s all about soft drinks. And your starting word is "diet."

Like many, I try and watch what I eat, with health being the main driver. That means more chicken and fish, less red meat, less fried foods, less sugar and and and. That’s not to say that I don’t have a burger and fries on occasion, or a piece of cake or candy. And summertime is ice cream time: the full-fat, full-flavor stuff in a cup or cone from a roadside stand or a specialty shop that costs way more than it should. But, hey, it’s summer!

The same can be said for the beverages I drink. Fortunately, my default choice is usually plain old tap water, so no major issue there. That said, I enjoy a glass of wine or a mixed drink when at a party or out with friends, and some studies show that that occasional indulgence is actually good for your metabolism. The same can’t be said of the odd milkshake or soda, but again, consumed sparingly as a treat, a can of Dr. Pepper is hardly cause for alarm.

In both of these areas that theme of "health" also includes weight. Not only do these various choices bode well for my general well-being, they also are less likely to add to my general tonnage. On the other hand, the exceptions noted usually do the opposite. But even there one can choose healthier options, be it turkey burgers and sweet potato fries, fruit sorbets and low calorie sodas. Not that I’m on a diet per se, but an ounce here and once there and pretty soon you’re talking not being able to button your pants.

Reduced calorie beverages have become a powerhouse category for this very reason. Since the appearance in 1958 of Diet Rite Cola, which was originally stocked among medicine as opposed to soft drinks and marketed "as an option for diabetics and other consumers who needed to limit their sugar intake," the category of diet beverages has exploded. 

Up until now, that is. More recently the word "diet" has slowly been disappearing from the soft drink aisle. There are still some behemoths taking up shelf space, with the two 800-pound gorillas (maybe a bad refence in this context) being Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke. But beyond those, beverages with lower or no calories have been not so much phased out as reformulated and rebranded, (and here is where our Wordle reference comes in) using the "e" from "diet" to become "zero."

It's a change that has been driven by Millennials and Zoomers, who view soda in general as unhealthy, and diet as another kind of four-letter word. According to Greg Lyons, chief marketing officer at PepsiCo Beverages North America, "Younger people just don’t like the word diet." Additionally, the term traditionally has more feminine connotations, driving away a certain market segment of young males. That doesn’t mean they want the extra calories, they just don’t want the association with something less than macho. And what is the same thing as no calories? Zero calories. And a whole new-ish category was thus created.

So now there is Coke Zero, Mountain Dew Zero and Sprite Zero. If you compare their respective labels to their diet twins you will not find much difference, though the flavor profiles are slightly tweaked with the zero versions generally being a touch sweeter and closer to their full-bodied siblings. Or as listed on Coca-Cola’s website, "Coca-Cola Zero Sugar looks and tastes more like Coca-Cola Classic, while Diet Coke has a lighter taste because it’s made with a different blend of flavors." Either way, the calorie count for both is nada.

It's hardly a surprising shift. As one exec once remarked about the future of then electronics retailer Radio Shack, "No one buys radios anymore, and no one likes shopping in a shack." If no one wants to be on a diet, then no one will want to drink diet soda. But zero? That may mean nothing, but nothing has become good: zero waste, zero clutter, zero hassles. What’s next? Playing modified Wordle again, from "diet" to "zero" to "hero," and we did it in three. The only question is how long it will take before we see Coke Hero. You heard it here first.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford prefers Diet Coke to Coke Zero. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.