PepsiCo has a new variation of their Pepsi Cola product, called Pepsi Next. They’ve come up with yet another super-tasting zippy, sweet drink.
As I drink a chilled 12-ounce plastic bottle while writing this, I’m positively moved by how much it tastes like regular Pepsi, that contains lots more sugar. Plus, I have not experienced any sweetness fatigue with Pepsi Next, though it has some aspartame. I often find that reduced calorie and diet soda pops seem to grow less sweet as I drink them through to the bottom of the can. Yet the Pepsi Next sweetness remains intact to my tongue until the end of the can is reached. I do not drink soda pop often these days. But when I do, I’ll keep Pepsi Next in mind as an occasional and exceedingly refreshing treat.
Benefits, Advantages, Pros, and Features
- This soda has more calories than a diet one, and less than a regular one. It is a cross between and all-sugar and all-diet pop.
- This Pepsi beverage has fewer calories. While Pepsi Next has more calories than a pure diet zero calorie soda, you will probably not get fat drinking this thirst quencher, unless you drink a case a day or something.
- They use four different sweetening agents in Pepsi Next to replicate the sweetness found in regular Pepsi by with few calories. These include high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, sucralose, and acesulfame potassium, and duplicate it they indeed did, quite well.
- It’s low sodium, at just 60 milligrams of sodium per 12-ounce serving.
- The fizz, caramel color, and sweetness level closely approximates those of regular Pepsi cola.
- They probably do not refer to Pepsi Next as diet because it does not taste like diet. Indeed, to me, the Pepsi Next taste is indistinguishable from regular Pepsi.
- The new bright blue label color scheme makes Pepsi Next easy to spot; though I’ve only ever seen it at Walmart. But I’m sure other stores will carry it as more people discover that same Pepsi flavor but with 60 percent less sugar.
- I experienced no sour aftertaste with Pepsi Next.
- Pepsi Next has the same degree of carbonation as regular Pepsi, and retains it after opening for about as long as well before going flat.
- The overall taste is smooth, zippy, and sweet without excessive carbonation.
Disadvantages, Cons, Problems, and Concerns
- Though they’ve reduced the amount of sugar in Pepsi Next, it still contains high fructose corn syrup as the second ingredient in the ingredients list. I’d prefer that they do away with this sweetener altogether, and replace all of it with sucralose (Splenda), or better yet, with stevia. But if I want an all-sucralose sweetened Pepsi product, I might drink Pepsi One.
- This cola contains 43 milligrams of caffeine, which is a moderate amount for a typical caffeinated cola soft drink. I hope that they eventually create a caffeine-free version of Pepsi Next.
- The best-if-used-by date on the bottle was hard to read, but appears to be six months out from the date I bought this bottle. So you can store Pepsi Next for a few months anyhow without degradation in taste. However, many products that derive their sweetness from aspartame, as this one does in part, can begin losing that sweetness if left in the basement too long. So while I often keep beverages way past this date, I’d not recommend doing so with any soda that contains aspartame.
Product Rating
Now that I’ve finished two bottles of this product, allow me to say in closing that my palate adores this low-calorie soft drink. But the caffeine concerns me a bit, as does the little bit of remaining HFCS. While I’d recommend this for healthy humans, I’d also caution my elders with prehypertension or high blood pressure to consume Pepsi Next with caution. I’d therefore rate this product at 93 of 100. For an almost-identical tasting product that has no HFCS at all, check out Pepsi Max.
Where To Buy Pepsi Next Cola
Look for the bright blue bottles, cans, and white cartons of Pepsi Next at your favorite larger grocery stores. I purchased mine at Walmart, and have not yet seen this soft drink sold at smaller stores and convenience shops yet. But it’s been out for less than a month as of this writing. So I expect that shortly, Pepsi Next will become ubiquitous, and appear in most any store.
References
Revision History
- : Moved this post to the Tom’s Diet Quest blog, added whitespace, adjusted ad placement, revised content, and rearranged category and tag assignments.
- 2012-04-22: Originally published.