Throwback

[Cognitive Gear]

Just a tip for everyone who enjoys this:

You can get Coca-Cola with real sugar during Passover. Just look for the two liter bottles with the yellow cap. This indicates that the bottle is kosher, and thus, is made with real sugar, not HFCS.

[Nate]

All that being said, I have yet to try Throwback or see it in stores. It is entirely possible that Throwback doesn't use the same recipe that England did (does?).

That's likely that the reason it tasted different was due to the country of manufacture rather than the sugar/HFCS difference. As I said, when I was in the Navy we got Mountain Dew from the local area (meaning the cans were in Arabic and English) and that tasted vastly different from the Mountain Dew in America. Throwback certainly doesn't taste like the Middle-Eastern Mountain Dew, I'll tell you that right now (in fact the Mountain Dew from there tasted really odd, the American version is way better).

So I stand behind what I said in my last post.

[Warrior4Christ]

Huh, so they apparently brought the Throwbacks back AGAIN (I remember buying them like a year ago or so, then they vanished, so that's why I said they weren't here, but now they ARE again). So I bought one the other day and tried it and...I still don't taste any difference whatsoever between regular Mountain Dew and the Throwbacks. I even tried! I tried to mentally fool myself by going "It'll taste a lot smoother, it'll be a bit sweeter, it will taste better than the regular kind because cane sugar makes all the difference." And it still tasted exactly. The. Same.

Again I'm willing to admit my taste buds are just broken, but I think honestly that it is more a psychological effect than a physical one. People just want to think cane sugar tastes way better so the effect is that though it tastes the same, their brain fools them into thinking it's better. See, I bought it saying "Hmm, cane sugar, wonder if it tastes any different than the regular kind." Since I had no predisposed notions to the taste, I had no psychological effect, and was able to taste it more clearly.

And before someone says "No really it does taste different honest and truly!" I would immediately refer them to placebo studies, where a simple sugar pill containing no medicine can have the same effect as an actual drug (in fact, that's how placebo studies work, if the pill has roughly the same effect as a placebo, the drug is considered to be a failure). The brain's belief that they are receiving real medicine is sometimes enough to help fight the disease/illness, even though the pill has no medicinal value. So there is a precedent for people's beliefs affecting things like that, and a psychological effect of "This has cane sugar therefore better taste" is extremely likely (and probably the case).

A blind test could easily confirm/deny the taste difference.

[Etoh*the*Greato]

That's likely that the reason it tasted different was due to the country of manufacture rather than the sugar/HFCS difference. As I said, when I was in the Navy we got Mountain Dew from the local area (meaning the cans were in Arabic and English) and that tasted vastly different from the Mountain Dew in America. Throwback certainly doesn't taste like the Middle-Eastern Mountain Dew, I'll tell you that right now (in fact the Mountain Dew from there tasted really odd, the American version is way better).

So I stand behind what I said in my last post.

A lot of this can be attributed partially to cultural taste. Different people groups have different tolerances for certain tastes. In the case of a comparison all of us are keen for doing on this website, Japan and America are vastly different. Americans largely like more powerful foods. Sweeter, etc. Japanese cuisine tends to lean towards more subtle flavors that a lot of Americans would call bland without having gotten used to it.

I think the international companies are aware of these things and do a little market research to adjust their recipes before releasing in certain countries.

On the other hand, soft drink manufacture may work like Whiskey and Beer manufacture where simple things such as the type of water available in the region can have an incalcuable and tremendous effect on the product, even after repeated filterings.