{"id":37325,"date":"2022-06-05T06:06:41","date_gmt":"2022-06-05T06:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/a-die-hard-diet-soda-drinker-investigates-the-zero-sugar-trend\/"},"modified":"2022-06-05T06:06:41","modified_gmt":"2022-06-05T06:06:41","slug":"a-die-hard-diet-soda-drinker-investigates-the-zero-sugar-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/a-die-hard-diet-soda-drinker-investigates-the-zero-sugar-trend\/","title":{"rendered":"A die-hard diet soda drinker investigates the zero sugar trend"},"content":{"rendered":"

I ordered my Diet A&W Cream Soda, and I quickly realized something was different. My “diet” soda was no longer diet. Instead, it had become “zero sugar.” <\/p>\n

Just what the heck was going on? I had to know because diet soda is my everything. It’s one of the few things in life I truly enjoy, and I know many of you love diet soda as well. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry. <\/div>\n

This week, I took my podcast Margins of Error in a thirst-quenching direction to try to solve this marketing mystery and see if I should actually be drinking any of this stuff.<\/p>\n

I soon realized A&W wasn’t some aberration. It was part of a trend. <\/p>\n

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Just take a trip down your local grocery store aisle as I did, and you’ll find that diet soda is disappearing. Brands such as Canada Dry and Crush have replaced their diet sodas with “zero sugar,” while others such as Coca-Cola and Dr Pepper now have zero sugar options in addition to diet. <\/p>\n

It all comes down to business. I spoke with Emily Cantois, who wrote “Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture,” and she told me the word “diet” has become a four-letter word. Diet has been associated by some – specifically young men – with “femininity, and in a derisive way,” said Cantois, an assistant professor of media studies at The University of Tulsa in Oklahoma. <\/div>\n

On top of that, Cantois told me that “diet is about lack, diet’s about restraint, diet’s about femininity in these negative, but also kind of painful ways.”<\/p>\n

It turns out this isn’t a new problem for low-calorie soda makers. Low-calorie soda, also called “diet” or “zero sugar,” has been around for 70 years, and how to promote it has always been a tricky thing. <\/p>\n

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