Food Theory: I QUIT Diet Coke!

i'm looking for a soda to replace diet coke in my life this is your opportunity sodas of the world impress me i am here to be impressed will you rise to the occasion though we'll see [Music] hello internet welcome to food theory where today it's like oh it's my dream episode if there is anything that you know about me and the theorist channels on youtube it's probably the fact that we created the sansa's nest meme unfortunately if there's two things that you know about us on the channel uh it is that i'm the guy on youtube who wears that red coat more often yeah that that red jacket does appear a lot it does yeah there's also five nights at freddy's oh it's the five minutes guys that's true uh but if there's like another other thing another thing that you know it's that matthew loves and when i say love i mean like kinda borderline stocks diet coke so to matthew's credit he gave up diet coke for all of 2020 which we did not know would be what a year to give it up yeah uh and so 2021 i'm coming back with a vengeance back hardcore we don't advocate drinking a lot of diet coke actually it's a little unhealthy uh i drink a lot of diet coke i don't advocate it but i drink a lot of it so do as i say and not as i do friends today we're going to test all of the diet colas to see if matthew should really be hopping back on the diet coke bandwagon or if his allegiance has been misplaced all these years yeah have i been loyal to the wrong diet soda as someone who prides himself on being a diet soda aficionado i should know that my allegiance is with the best possible option so today we have assembled a huge variety of different cola flavors and in honor of march madness we are putting them all into a competition head-to-head bracket style for any of you unfamiliar with march madness it's a huge month-long college basketball tournament here in the states and it's going on right now as we speak 64 teams get invited 68 if you count the playing games and they all duke it out single elimination style until one team has crowned the national champion and today food theory is gonna be used in a similar approach to determine the champion of matpat's taste buds i asked my wife steph to join me in the taste test today to act as a control i can pretty much pick the taste of diet coke out of a crowd at this point but steph doesn't drink nearly as much diet soda as i do so she's here to hold my feet to the fire and make sure that i'm staying as objective as possible now in order to enter today's march madness tournament get it i changed madness to madness oh look at that pro writing right there a soda has to meet three criteria first it has to be cola flavored sorry to all the root beers and dr peppers of the world but this episode ain't about you same goes for colas that have flavoring added like cherry or lime today we're strictly looking at sodas with the cola flavor first no twists secondly today's cola contenders must have zero calories diet coke has zero calories so any soda looking to replace it in my life needs to bring zero to the table as well i'm sorry coca-cola life you and your 15 calories like pick a lane and stick with it none of this middle of the road business finally i'll only be looking at zero calorie colas that are readily available for me here in north carolina if you don't see your favorite diet cola in today's tournament it's because it wasn't for sale near my home i get that a lot of great options probably maybe got left out of the tournament and please let me know if we've missed any in the comments below but if a soft drink is actually gonna supplant diet coke in my day-to-day life well i gotta be able to actually drink it on a regular basis with all that being said let's get porn friends over the teeth over the gums look out matpat here it comes let's pour pour not so fast me in true march madness form we can't really start the tournament until we have ourselves a play in game so before we get into the main competition here we first have to have a runoff of diet coke you see there are lots of different sources of diet coke and you ask anyone who is as die-hard of a diet coke aficionado as i am they'll tell you that different sources taste differently for instance soda fountain diet coke there's also plastic bottle diet coke can diet coke so we have them represented here to make sure that the one that enters the competition is putting its best foot forward and the diet coke only gets one entry onto the main bracket you can't have like half the bracket be diet coke so it gets one shot and we're gonna see which one goes up against all the other so right so here we go we have the three laid out here straw ready straw ready let the diet coke off begin these have been poured without me seeing them but i can tell you that is the can that's a can right it's weird because it's the same thing but you can tell they're different it might be the bottle that might be the bottle because it wasn't nope that's bottle but we'll see we'll see this is weird they are very distinct across the board oh yeah that's weird this one is slightly sweeter this one has an imaginary plastic taste that i think i'm making up but maybe not and then this one is like the other one which one goes into the bracket then i think it's i think it's this one it's a better flavor right i'm okay with that i think we i think this is the entry okay okay should we check yeah let's check them this is the can oh this is fountain that's fountain and this man is the bottle you're good i'm very serious about this one so with that being said fountain diet coke moves into the main bracket and now the competition actually begins get these out of here get these garbage diet cokes out of here so at long last we finally had our bracket for the first round of march madness we decided to generally give the top seeds to the big top-selling brands with mid-level seeds going to the medium-sized brands and indie bottlers and the lowest seeds go into white label grocery brands which meant that our first first-round match-up was between the top-seeded juggernaut of the competition fountain diet coke and bottom-seeded publix diet cola so for those of you who don't know publix is a regional grocery store specializing in like the southeast of the us yeah in florida and florida is part of the southeast of the us every grocery store seems to have their own brand of diet soda in order to fill out 16 slots on the bracket we needed to dip into a lot of those we dug deep guys so there we go will this be a march madness style upset let's see alas it wasn't an upset well we technically didn't know the identities of the two soda samples it was pretty obvious to us which cup contained the number one selling diet soda in the world i think the winner here clearly is the diet coke yeah the publix brand definitely much more sweet which is good and has a solid soda flavor but i think the balance of sweetness to like acidity and carbonation just works better with the diet coke here yeah or number two i don't know if it's diet coke but i think number two is the winner it is number two yeah it is ding round number one goes to diet coke next up was eighth seeded sodastream diet cola versus seventh seeded boilin diet cane cola boilin is a small bottling company that started making birch beer in new jersey back in the 1890's we found it for sale at one of the soda specialty shops near a house and it's arguably the most old-school bottler in today's tournament well it's true that coca-cola is the original cola boilin has stayed true to their original recipes and methods for over a hundred years whereas the big boys started to take on things like corn syrup and plastic bottles along the way sodastream isn't really a soda as much as it is a machine a system that allows you to make your own soda from home now one of these two diet colas really stood out to us and not in a good way oh this one no this one really this one it's cough syrup oh it's so bad oh it's terrible why is that soap even smells like cough syrup oh yeah oh what is this it's very strong wow but it does have like again if you're going to cola for that medicinal flavor whatever two is is it's intense terrible i do feel like the paint has been stripped off the roof of my mouth i know and yes that means i've been eating paint chips all these years we assumed cup number two was the soda stream and that we had somehow miscalibrated the machine or something but we were certainly wrong number one is sodastream no way really wow maybe boiling makes lots of other sodas i'm sure their other sodas might be totally lovely this is not it just coats your tongue and it stays on it smells so bad in all honesty we weren't really huge fans of the sodastream's diet coley either but got past this round to be fair boilin was very upfront about the fact that their soda pops are unique bold and quote are best savored not slugged down their original non-diet pure cane cola is one i'd definitely be curious to try out i imagine it'd be a bit like stepping back in time with our first minor upset in the books it was time for our seventh seeded caffeine-free diet pepsi to face off against 11 seed xevia cola which is a zero calorie soda that uses the plant-based and supposedly healthier sweetener stevia unlike the other colas in the tournament xevia is clear colored so we had a pretty good idea which cup it was in still we did our best to stay impartial wow unless we got crystal pepsi from back in the 80s something tells me that uh this one might be the caffeine free diet pepsi but you know i'm gonna try to judge as neutrally as possible here ultimately steph and i determined that we just don't really like stevia as a soda sweetener the stevia really overpowered the cola flavors with its sweetness and it lingered on our tongues for a long time too i'm actually not a big fan and for me i actually love the idea of stevia i wish i liked stevia i like want that one to win but for me it's too sweet unfortunately xevia you were good but not enough to be the heavy hitter that is diet pepsi yeah our next matchup was diet right cola against pepsi zero sugar this is a battle of old versus new diet right the first diet coal ever has been around since 1958 meanwhile pepsi zero sugar didn't hit the scene until the 21st century i gotta say this one was close both steph and i had difficulty telling them apart because they tasted so similarly in the end pepsi zero sugar eeked out the win but let it be known to all you pepsi zero drinkers out there if you're looking to ditch the sweetener aspartame which is an artificial sweetener that you're really not allowed to use in a worryingly large number of countries out there in the world you might want to try diet right which uses splenda brand sucralose instead supposedly a healthier alternative next up diet shasta cola versus coke zero technically it's now coca-cola zero sugar because they tweaked the recipe a few years back but let's get real no one's ever gonna call it that it's not happening coke and i'm not gonna pretend like it's happening shasta is a soft drink manufacturer here in the states that offers as they put it quote a value-priced soft drink line for me i always knew it as the soda of choice for post-game t-ball snacks because they came in squatty kid-sized cans probably a bad omen for old shasta that i remember the cans more than the soda itself who knows maybe they've changed their recipe since the 90s but as a lowly 13th seed diet chasticola has its work cut out for it against the three seed of coke zero that's good that's very pleasant i like it mine was not really no mine was really chemically mine was not a winner yeah one takes it probably coke zero yeah this is let me explain what this flavor is not good that's the flavor of that one it does have a really synthetic aftertaste that just doesn't work number one is the winner what was number one zero zero go figure sorry shasta shasta got the shaft shout out we got captain shafza okay moving on after that we had a matchup between two grocery store brands walmart's diet sam's cola versus whole foods 365 zero calorie cola let's see how it is 365 will i be drinking this 365 days a year oh i hate this whatever this is this is miserable oh this is okay oh oh this is so awful oh i hate it i hate it so much wow oh i hate it with a fiery passion i'm so sorry oh it's weird it is so bizarre no it is whack when you first take it there's nothing wrong with it except it's like oh this is like a little sweeter than it should be and then it just has this lingering awful sweetness on the back what is the one that i hate matt uh whole foods this is is this flavored with stevia it's flavored with stevia that's why we hate it really this is i just don't like stuff flavored with stevia i can't get over it diet sam's cola moved on to the second round and we moved on to our next first round match-up the diet cola from north carolina-based grocery store harris teeter versus the specialty soda johnny ryan diet cola like boiling johnny ryan is another old school bottler that's stuck with glass bottles and cane sugar in its non-diet sodas harris teeter meanwhile is literally the closest grocery store to her house i knew absolutely nothing about their diet cola going into this tournament other than the fact that we needed a 16th diet colon it happened to be there on the shelf when we needed it most i.e the morning of the shoot when we were one short oh this is very good this is weird i can't decide if i like it or not this is this is nice i like this because um the flavor of whatever one is it has that like signature diet soda flavor but there's a little bit like a fruitiness on the back end i like one a lot this one's actually right it's nice it's really good there's an almost citrus cherry kind of kick in there but it's it's still strongly cola so it's only just a little hint it's really nice it just kind of rounds out the flavor a little bit more that one has some kind of taste in there too that's not it's kind of weird i don't know i was like i can't decide if i really enjoy that nope i would say number one takes the round hmm matt what's number one hands down harris teeter oh no carrots cheetah no way i'm so sorry johnny ryan i was rooting for that one i thought for sure that this was gonna be the johnny ryan cause i'm like oh this is this is the sort of flavor that you can only get out of like a specialty handcrafted thing no wow man this is great oh man we might have ourselves the shocker upset favorite here and yet another shocking upset came right on its heels when another north carolina-based grocery chain food lion narrowly edged out diet pepsi with its diet cola you heard that right the north carolina-based supermarket food lion which you've probably never heard of has a diet cola that was capable of edging out the diet pepsi in our very highly scientific tests that we're running here today i was shocked well done north carolina way to represent so it was a strong finish in the first round for our regional grocery chains with food lion and harris teeter both pulling out surprise victories but plenty of big names still made it through as well coke and pepsi each sent two products to the second round and with sodastream and diet sam's cola also in the mix it was anybody's guess as to who would be named top pop what do you call it steph i'm a soda soda versus you grew up as pi i grew up as a pop man up in the midwest we call it pop well here in the south it's all universally coke so you'd go into a restaurant and they'd be like what kind of coke do you want and you'd be like i want dr pepper you guys down here in the south are just chaotic yeah let us know what you are are you pop soda coke or something else or other in the second round both coke products walked through easy wins coke zero was decidedly tastier than diet sam's club and diet coke was a slam dunk against sodastream no questions asked the matchup between diet pepsi caffeine free or as a normal human would call it caffeine-free diet pepsi and pepsi zero was close but in the end steph and i chose diet pepsi caffeine free is the winner but the second round match-up that really delivered was the battle of the south harris teeter diet cola versus food lion diet cola this is really good so is this one these are really good both of these i wish both of these could go through because i think that both would have a chance at taking out some of the heavier hitters i am shocked by the strength of the store brands of some of these southern grocery stores yeah they're really good and i'm sure that these are also like extremely similar if not exactly the same as other regional grocery stores so i guess the lesson just based on how far these both have made it through the brackets is like don't be put off by the store brand like they are really good sometimes you just have to try it right you just have to give it a try the generic the store brand whatever totally legit uh i am shocked because one has this very unique again it has that weird interesting fruity blend that none of the other ones have it has a really great flavor to it you said number one is your favorite one is the favorite hairsteeder this is harris teeter yeah and you said it's because it's fruity yeah i don't know if this is gonna spoil things for you yes so i can hold it but there's a difference in ingredients between the two oh really what what about citric acid yeah really it's the citric acid so huh so this is the this is harris teeter so harris teeter moves on you know it's the same difference that we found between fruit loops and apple jacks citric acid makes such a big difference really makes a huge it's also the thing that made a huge difference with the kfc episode citric acid just runs our world we don't even know it citric acid is like the magic ingredient in all of these recipes this is really good guys i'm really excited about this this could take it and with that our final four was set first up was diet coke versus caffeine-free diet pepsi as soon as the two samples touched my lips i could tell which was which i also knew i preferred diet coke but i kept that to myself and sat back and let steph decide her favorite between the two just to make sure i wasn't bringing my own bias to the table okay then i'll go first i prove i prefer number one diet coke oh moving on to the finals the other final four matchup was our cinderella story 13 seed harris teeter diet cola versus third seeded perennial powerhouse coke zero and unlike the previous round steph and i didn't see eye to eye i definitely preferred cup number one and she definitely preferred cup number two eventually we decided to rock paper scissors for it ready [Music] oh no [Laughter] we didn't find this out until later but cup number one was harris teeter and number two was coke zero so weirdly enough i wasn't even fighting for a coke product here just wanted to mention that because i'm a little proud of myself for staying objective neither of us are budging here let me let me convince you sample it one more time stephanie nope i've made my choice [Music] after six consecutive rock paper scissor ties we took it as a sign from the universe and opted to have a three-way championship round diet coke versus harris teeter diet cola the underdog versus coke zero to be honest at this point late in the day we'd tested these finalist colas so many times their identities were pretty obvious to us as soon as they hit our tongues one very mild yeah good that's okay fine fine it's diet coke it's fine it's diet coke you can tell i know it's that fountain diet coke two harris teeter it's got that that fruitiness on the bottom it does you know it does nice it's real nice nice i kind of like it it's real good three for whatever reason this the coke zero which usually reads as a really sugary to me is less sugary this time number three bloke coke give it to me so steph you're going with number three number three [Music] number three is my number three place two is the best in my diet coke adult brain it has the most interesting flavor while still maintaining the diet cola thing that i just live for it's it's that fruitiness that's in it it's that added little like bump at the back end of it that's really delicious and it's so unique and interesting and not chemically flat it doesn't taste too chemically it doesn't taste too sweet it is without question like and i and i it blows my mind are you hearing this no joke and this is totally behind the scenes just to give you guys an idea of where this this was not on the list as of this morning this was supposed to be diet coke splenda but they didn't sell it in any stores even remotely near us i went out to the local harris teeter and this was the one thing that they had and i'm like we need one filler slot here let me grab it and it has shockingly bested everyone in this country i can't believe i don't even i don't even have a joke for that i can't i can't believe that that is not for the memes that's not for the views that's not clickbait like i i'm as shocked as you are this is my favorite diet soda what what now i realize the result isn't exactly helpful to a lot of you theorists out there after all harris teeter is a small regional grocery chain and if you don't live along the u.s eastern seaboard it's going to be tough to get so we did some digging into harris teeter brand soda and here's the skinny being a relatively small chain harris teeter doesn't have their own food processing or manufacturing instead they do what a lot of grocery stores do and slap their logo on white label products or as grocery stores prefer to call them private label products this probably merits its own food theory episode in the future but basically there are factories that quietly produce similar or even identical food products for multiple brands so the store brand spaghetti at one grocery store might be exactly the same and come from the same factory as the store brand spaghetti sold at the competitor's store heck the more expensive brand name spaghetti might actually be from the same factory too and the same goes for sodas now in 2013 harris teeter merged with and became a subsidiary of the much larger retail company kroger while harris teeter is too small to manufacture their own food products kroger operates quote 35 food processing or manufacturing facilities so here's some homework for all the theorists out there looking to find the best diet cola in their area check out white label sodas from these kroger-owned stores listed on their website i can't prove it without taking a sizable road trip but i have a sneaking suspicion that some of these stores like kroger's fred meyers ralph's fries and food for less might actually be selling the exact same white label soda as harris teeter but with a different label on it be sure to let me know down in the comments i am really curious to know if kroger is secretly supplying us all with the most delicious diet cola the world has ever tasted so there you have it theorists i set out today looking to get the truth and i think i found it look there's always gonna be a special place in my heart for diet coke and let's not overlook the fact that it had a strong showing today it was both my and steph's second place choice but if and when i get back on the soda bandwagon i'll be stocking up on the tastier and considerably cheaper i might add harris teeter diet cola though i gotta say after the amount of soda we ingested today might be a while before steph or i ever pick up a soda again but hey that's just a theory a food theory bon appetit thanks for watching theorists i just ingested twice my body weight and soda for your entertainment how about a click of that subscribe button in return steph and i are always running new food experiments here on the food theory channel some of them are actually useful and others are well sometimes they're just for fun like last week's episode on panera bread bowl gloves yup you heard that right they're gloves made of bread i'm not gonna say that we regret making the episode but you'll probably regret if you don't watch it that link's on screen right now and i'll see you all next week

Channel: The Food Theorists

Views: 2,754,276

Rating: 4.9404383 out of 5

Keywords: soda, pepsi, coke, diet coke, diet pepsi, coke vs pepsi, pepsi vs coke, fountain soda, soda stream, march madness, march madness bracket, what is the best soda, soda taste test, trying every soda, soda challenge, soda mukbang, food theorists, food theory, matpat, game theorists, film theorists, game theory, film theory, eat the menu, binging with babish, soda pop, matpat diet coke, matpat diet coke addiction

Id: a5YAGYyuA0U

Length: 24min 31sec (1471 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/HertsOB]

Is there something odd going on with the glitches occasionally happening in the video? They seem to be in the theory channel colours (green, red, yellow) and it's making my theory senses tingle.

There definitely seems to be at least two glitch moments. A coloured one when first discussing Harris Tweeter and then later on the cartoon of the kid and businessman on the lawn is a dark/black glitch whilst discussing Kroger.

[u/Pickle_Juice54]

The static is making me very confused and making my theorist brain tick, but I don't know.

[u/Ravenlock]

It's definitely intentional. Way too noticeable to have been left in by accident and too consistent to not mean something. 4:06, 8:10, and 13:31, that I noticed.

[u/Lordician]

From my Youtube comment:
Future reference for theorists: "MA MA WA" weirdly capitalized in the description. Typing "MAMAWA encoding" in Google refers to an RGB image-based data analysis thing, maybe relevant?
Weird color bands glitches all over the video. Strange green horizontal almost glitchy looking stripes. These are the timestamps:
3:04 - 3:05, 1st color bands.
4:05 - 4:06, 2nd color bands.
8:09 - 8:10, 3rd color bands, very visible.
9:42 - 9:43, 4th color bands, very fast.
13:30 - 13:31, 5th color bands, pretty fast.
22:52 - 22:53, 6th color bands. Last one.
Spacing between them is a bit odd, but it is all I could find in my 2nd watch and honestly not that big into ARG's.
Good luck, hope you all can figure it out.

[u/jhonethen]

Arg? comeing soon?

[u/ContributionOk9193]

There is something going on, they are lot of gliches

[u/Magicman432]

To all of the people looking for meaning in the glitches, it was happening on multiple videos today, not just on theorist channels.

[u/Silverseren]

sigh I really wish MatPat didn't just throw in the random anti-science fearmongering jab about aspartame sourced from Wikipedia, specifically from an article whose lede directly notes the dozens of studies done by multiple countries that have repeatedly shown no negative health impacts.

You are better than this, you guys.

[u/NeoMegaRyuMKII]

I feel like the experiment was a bit flawed in its design, at least when it came to the Diet Coke.

While I get why they used the fountain version, it wasn't the ideal choice: most people who buy soda at a grocery store get them either in cans or in bottles. The fountain version is ideal only for circumstances in which one can reliably get it, such as at a restaurant or a fast food place. If their goal was to compare the the sodas they can buy at a grocery store then the correct scientific way to do so would be to get whichever of the two options that they prefer.