In the beginning of the year, I heard that Pepsi would be offering products made with natural sugar, rather than corn syrup. I rarely drink soda, but I was excited by the prospect. There are High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) sodas (Coke, Pepsi, etc) and there are sugar sodas (Jones), but Pepsi having both sugar and syrup lets us make a more direct comparison on sweeteners rather than recipe. The question at hand, is there really any taste differences between Pepsi Throwback (with natural sugar, a mixture of cane sugar and beet sugar according to Pepsi via bevreview) and Pepsi (with HFCS). My small experiment points in the direction of yes, there is a difference: Throwback seems sweeter, the difference is notable in the aftertaste, and people psychologically prefer natural sugar.

Background: Replacing Sugar with Syrup
The United States is one of the only countries to use HFCS as a sweetener in its sodas and food products. The rest of the world uses a variety of other natural sugars such as cane sugar or beet sugar. Pepsi and Coke both used sugar up until 1984, when they switched to corn syrup. It was an choice motivated by costs: Sugar became artificially expensive, Corn became artificially cheap. 1984 marked the reinstatement of sugar tariffs to protect US sugar producers from cheaper foreign sugar (see The Great Sugar Shaft). At the same time, the US government subsidizes the production of corn (see Archer Daniels Midland:
A Case Study In Corporate Welfare). The end result creates economic incentives to produce products with corn at the expense of the taxpayer (corn) and consumer (sugar).

Additionally, I’ll note that HFCS has a stigma in some circles as being less healthy than sugar (see Wikipedia for many links). This led to an advertising campaign by the Corn Refiners Association claiming corn syrup is “natural” because it’s made from corn (see HFCS ads).

Methods
Participants were presented with 2 cups and informed one was Pepsi and one was Pepsi Throwback. The cups were labeled A and B and alternated between Pepsi and Throwback with each participant. Each cup contain roughly 2.5 fl oz, and participants were free to drink from either cup at any time. No refills were allowed.

All beverages were canned, to ensure similar effects of packaging. Participants drank from either 2 glass cups or 2 paper cups. Except for 2 participants who had both at room temperature (by request), all beverages were served cooled, having sat side-by-side in the refrigerator.

Before beginning their taste tests, the participants were informed of the four main questions they would be asked:

Which do you prefer? (A) 2 1 0 1 2 (B)*
 * 2: strong preference, 1: mild preference, 0: no preference
Which is sweeter? A / B
Which do you think is Pepsi, and which is Throwback?
Are there any other differences you notice in the tastes?

Results: Tasting the Difference
I gathered participants from nearby, mostly friends and neighbors in the office. 14 individuals participated (8 male / 6 female). Anecdotally, few of the participants regularly drank Pepsi, or soda, and this sample is too small to draw firm conclusions. So, take the results with a grain of saltsugar.

There was essentially no difference in preference between the two. 7 preferred Throwback, 6 preferred Pepsi, and one chose neither. No participant indicated a strong preference (choosing only 1 or 0). Many participants noted they were about the same.

Participants indicated Throwback is sweeter 66% of the time. 2 participants withheld judgement, one remarking during the test “[Throwback] is almost sweeter, but [Pepsi] has a sweeter aftertaste.” An interesting sidenote: 12 fl oz of Throwback contain 40 g of sugars, whereas Pepsi contains 42 g sugars. Throwback is seen as sweeter, but with less total sugars.

Participants could not identify Pepsi or Throwback. 5 guessed correctly, 6 guessed incorrectly, 3 declined to guess. This is certainly no better than chance: however, 7 (64%) of those participants thought they preferred Throwback. Once again, this is a small sample size, but throughout the experiment there did seem to be a sense that natural sugar would taste better.

The comments below represent all comments made while the beverage identities unknown. Interestingly, there were more comments made about throwback. I do not claim to know why.

(tb):I taste more in this
(tb):sweeter (p):more bite
(tb):sweeter, carmelly
(tb):almost sweeter (p):sweeter aftertaste
(tb):more intense, more exciing, more strong taste
(tb):more carbonation (p):sweeter
(tb):more bubbly
(tb):stickier
(tb):smells acidic/corbonicy, it’s possiblly sweeter (just don’t know)
(tb):different after tastes
(tb):Not really too much difference
(p):fizzier

Limitations
This was a pseudo-scientific study. I attempted to be as rigorous as I could while still working on… well, my work. None of the numbers presented are statistically significant I would need about 20 more people to show that Throwback is sweeter with 95% confidence were the trend to continue. I don’t have that much Throwback (can’t buy it here in Champaign) or time. If anyone wants to conduct their own studies according to the methods laid out above, I might be able to add them in for more conclusive evidence. For now, the most these results can provide is a stronger hypothesis.

Conclusion
Though somewhat sweeter, there is no reason to presume that Throwback tastes better than Pepsi. The strongest result indicates people preferred to think they liked “natural” sugar more than HFCS, though that was not the case.

Addendum
The Chicago Tribune just ran an interesting article called Natural sugar versus high-fructose corn syrup; it’s worth a read.