In this Feb. 9, 2009 file photo, Pepsi drinks are on display at JJ&F Market in Palo Alto, Calif.Paul Sakuma/The Associated Press
PepsiCo Inc. will start selling Diet Pepsi without aspartame later this year, one of the biggest changes to the beverage in decades, after a consumer backlash against the artificial sweetener crushed sales.
The company will replace aspartame with a blend of sucralose and acesulfame potassium in Diet Pepsi, Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi and Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi sold in the U.S. beginning in August. Diet Pepsi's sales volume declined 5.2 per cent last year, according to Beverage-Digest. Sales of Coca-Cola's Diet Coke, which also uses aspartame, dropped 6.6 per cent.
PepsiCo is getting the jump on Diet Coke, the country's No. 1 sugar-free soda, in removing the controversial sweetener. Consumers have been backing away from both brands in recent years, fearful that the lab-created sweetener may cause cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has said there is no proof of a health risk from aspartame.
"Decades of studies have shown that aspartame is safe, but the reality is that consumer demand in the U.S. has been evolving," Seth Kaufman, senior vice president of Pepsi and the company's favours drinks in North America, said in an interview. "The U.S. diet cola consumer has been asking and asking and asking for an aspartame-free great diet cola."
Coke's Response
Even so, Coca-Cola isn't budging.
"There are currently no plans to change the sweetener for Diet Coke, America's favourite no-calorie soft drink," Scott Williamson, a spokesman, said in an e-mail. "All of the beverages we offer and ingredients we use are safe."
PepsiCo's decision came after consumer complaints accelerated during the past two years – with feedback flowing in through call lines, social media and letters, Kaufman said. In surveys, aspartame was the top reason given by consumers for drinking less of the diet cola, he said.
"It's been going on for some time, and the volume of it over the past two years has really been high," Kaufman said.
PepsiCo doesn't have plans to replace aspartame in Diet Mountain Dew, despite a 3 per cent sales decline. That product is the Purchase, New York-based company's best-selling diet beverage after Diet Pepsi.
There are no plans to remove aspartame from other PepsiCo soft drinks either, Kaufman said. The focus for the change is on colas with declining sales. With aspartame-sweetened Pepsi Max, for example, consumers didn't cite the ingredient as one of the top 10 reasons they were drinking less of it, Kaufman said.
Defending Aspartame
Coca-Cola, based in Atlanta, took a shot at the issue in mid-2013 with print ads in national publications that defended the safety of aspartame. Sales of Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi both declined almost 7 per cent that year.
The crisis, which came on top of a consumer reaction against high-calorie sugar-sweetened drinks, has forced Coca– Cola and PepsiCo into the lab for solutions. Both have aggressively pursued a natural, noncaloric ingredient called stevia, which is extracted from a leaf and is 200 to 300 times sweeter than sugar.
Stevia doesn't work so well in colas, however. It gives off a metallic aftertaste when used in higher doses. So the soda makers are researching ways to ferment and bio-engineer copies of a better-tasting stevia molecule found in the leaf.