New Diet Pepsi Has Splenda Instead of Aspartame; Better Than Diet Coke?

Probably one of the most confounding and ironic food products in the market today is diet soda, as soda is often seen as a big no-no for people who want to lose weight or maintain good weight due to its sugar contents. Diet sodas, or sodas with lowered or artificial sugar surfaced to address the needs of this very market, but sugar substitutes have also been criticized for being linked to various illnesses.

In fact, aspartame, which is present in diet sodas such as Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke, is often linked to cancer, but it has not yet been clearly defined or confirmed by health authorities.

According to the American Cancer Society, several studies have been done to see if humans who consumed aspartame-containing beverages had a higher risk for developing lymphomas, leukemias, or brain tumors, but results showed that there is no direct effect.

The American Food and Drug Administration stated: "Considering results from the large number of studies on aspartame's safety, including five previously conducted negative chronic carcinogenicity studies, a recently reported large epidemiology study with negative associations between the use of aspartame and the occurrence of tumors, and negative findings from a series of three transgenic mouse assays, FDA finds no reason to alter its previous conclusion that aspartame is safe as a general purpose sweetener in food."

This month, Pepsi is launching a new Diet Pepsi without the aspartame, replacing it with sucralose instead. MarketWatch reports that sucralose is "a modified form of sugar with added chlorine", while aspartame is created from amino acids.

Michael F. Jacobson, executive director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest told MarketWatch, said: "Sucralose is almost certainly safer than aspartame. The fact that Diet Pepsi will be specifically marketed as ‘aspartame free’ is a blunt acknowledgment that consumers have soured on aspartame and the new cans should increase consumer awareness even further and spur other food and beverage companies to abandon it, including Diet Coke."

According to AL.com, Pepsi admitted that the reason why they're shifting to sucralose from aspartame is because of their consumers' concern about the health effects of the latter. PepsiCo senior vice president Seth Kaufman said, "It's the No. 1 thing that our customers have been calling about."

This hopeful move by Pepsi is to address their falling sales. In fact, MarketWatch reports that in general, diet soda drinks sales have dropped by almost 20 percent since 2009, and is expected to continue its downfall. On the contrary, market researchers expect a growth in energy drinks. More importantly, since Perrier water was launched 40 years ago in the U.S., consumption of bottled drinking water has shot up to 2,700 percent, as reported by the Beverage Marketing Corporation.

The downhill sales of sodas and the rise of other drinks reflects the changing choices of the American consumer. Does this mean that Americans are becoming more health conscious? Quite possibly, if you're looking at this data alone.

"Reformulated or not, diet sodas probably are still a better choice than full-calorie sodas sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup or sugar," Jacobson said. It's like choosing the lesser evil between diet and non-diet soda.