Aspartame - 49 Reviews

I fell victim to marketing yet again. I went to the store today and noticed a big selection of Turkey Hill teas and lemonades in the cooler. Turkey Hill makes some of my favorite drinks and has never disappointed me. I was going to just get a traditional raspberry iced tea, until I saw this jug of raspberry lemonade with the ominous “limited edition” beacon. As much as I wanted that raspberry iced tea, not wanting to potentially miss out on this flavor drove me to buy this instead.

I had reservations with this before opening since it is a light/diet drink and sweetened with fake sugar. Luckily, it's pretty damn good! It doesn't have a diet/chemical taste at all, which is good news. In fact, in a blind taste test I doubt I could identify this as a diet drink, which means they're doing something right. It has a really nice sour taste to it, which is key (in my eyes) for good lemonade. Hopefully others concur with my thoughts and Turkey Hill rethinks this as being only a limited edition drink.

I saw this bottle in my mom's fridge and realized that we hadn't reviewed it yet. Even though I hate diet soda, I decided to give it a try in the name of Thirsty Dudes.

Battery acid. That's what it tastes like. It burns all the way down. No matter how much I try, I can't get used to the diet soda taste. I only had a couple sips and my stomach feels horrible.

I already have a hard time drinking most energy drinks. When you give me a diet/sugar free energy drink, there's no way this is going to be good. The first sip of this was pretty horrible, like swallowing battery acid. The next couple wasn't too bad. Perhaps I've already acquired the taste for this drink? Nope, around the fourth sip the first couple sips finally hit my stomach and it feels very similar to the time I had food poisoning. For three days straight, I lied on the couch while my stomach felt like it was eating itself. It was easily in my top five worst feelings I have ever felt. Any drink that can give me that same feeling is not one I want to consume.

Dude one: "I really want to watch my weight, but I really want a Pepsi (just one Pepsi)."

Dude two: "Why don't you get a bottle of Diet Pepsi? It has zero calories."

Dude one: "No way, then everyone at the gym will know I'm watching my weight and make fun of me."

Dude two: "I heard about this new thing called Pepsi Max. It's just like Diet Pepsi, but it's in a discrete bottle without the dreaded word 'diet' on it."

Dude one: "Whoa! It even has a killer catch phrase on it: 'zero calories, maximum taste' "

Dude two: "Have fun with that, I can't stand the gross aspartame taste in it. I only know about it because I accidentally bought a bottle of it last week. I thought it was regular Pepsi and didn't notice it had zero calories until I got home. I drank it anyways because I didn't want to waste it."

I blame Scott Pilgrim vs. The World for me buying this bottle. I have probably watched that movie 20 times in the past 2 months. Apparently the constant and obviously Coke Zero product placement in it got into my head because I don't ever buy diet sodas.

As far as zero calorie aspartame infused diet sodas are concerned, this isn't the worst I've ever had. The cola is smooth and light before the awful diet taste burns the back of your throat. All I can think about when drinking this is the aspartame turning into formaldehyde inside of me.

Hank's has yet to steer us wrong. I will admit that I've had this bottle of root beer for a decent amount of time. I kept putting it off because, let's face it, diet is pretty gross. It always seems to taste chemical some how.
Hank's must have spent some time in the lab working on this one, because I was actually able to make it through the bottle with little problems from my taste buds. Initially it actually tastes like root beer, and not just that generic diet flavor. That comes as a light aftertaste. When diabetes comes a knocking, and my sugar dreams all come crashing down, I'll make sure to order a case of this.

Time for another installment to our diet section of the ever-growing list of drinks. See, dieteers? We care. We really do. So lose that weight and don't look back.

Initially, this smells like an energy drink. While awaiting the million Smarties flavor to invade my taste buds, I was happy/surprised to not get it. There is bitterness to this that perhaps in the non-diet version might be a little less bitter, but it's actually not bad. With the aspartame, I got a bit of the tongue pinching that you get with artificial sweeteners, but you get a strong tea and light, dry cola taste. It's not bad and it's definitely different. If you have the chance, get it and give it a taste. Expect it to be bitter, because the yerba mate is, after all, a tea.


Now, as you can see (hopefully) that I took a picture of my friend John drinking this. He wanted to put in a little review so here is his contribution to Thirsty Dudes:

While it resembles some foul-tasting energy drinks I've had, the resemblance is similar to the resemblance between a hot sister and an ugly sister. We've all seen them... you know they're sisters, they look somewhat alike, and they act a lot alike, yet one is hot and the other is butt-ugly.

There was a point in my life when I preferred the sugar free Red Bull over the original. When I drank this I cannot for the life of me remember why. It tastes very similar to regular Red Bull, like liquid Smarties. The exception is that it's made with Aspartame. That means it tastes like diet liquid Smarties.
As far as diet drinks go, it's not bad. I suggest it if you're looking for a pick me up, but you're watching your weight. If that's not an issue, just grab an original one out of the cooler at the gas station.

Is this our first diet drink? I think it might be. My review? Tastes like a diet drink. Aspartame has the "too sweet" bite aftertaste to it. I typically don't drink things like this, but with any new drink, it has to be reviews. Sorry friend, but you too have to enter the gauntlet.

Sweeteners aside, it give you a good initial kick of flavor. Even though it is still, at its core, lemon and lime, you really get a cranberry taste.

Far from my least favorite diet pop, but I honestly don't have a favorite so you can take that however you would like. It tastes a lot less like poison than a lot of the other diet's I've tried in the past.