Diet Pepsi is eliminating the main ingredient, aspartame, from its recipe. "The company will begin to replace aspartame with a blend of sucralose and acesulfame potassium in Diet Pepsi, Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi and Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi sold in the U.S. in August," Duane Stanford reported at Bloomberg.
The move came after Diet Pepsi's sales dropped by 5.2% in 2014. It is on this move that the company is hoping that the company will eventually recover from its declining sales as more and more Americans prefer drinking teas and energy drinks rather than soda.
More and more consumers are becoming aware of the ill-health brought about by aspartame. An artificial, man-made sweetener, many believe that aspartame is responsible for various health concerns, including cancer, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) could not find any sufficient evidence to link artificial sweeteners with cancer.
Among the most popular aspartame brands are NutraSweet® and Equal®. PepsiCo already launched a new beverage with natural the sweetener Stevia called Pepsi True.
The company says that the product "will continue to provide consumers with the crisp, refreshing zero-calorie cola taste they expect from Pepsi."
Analysts believe that Pepsi and other beverage companies, like rival Coca-Cola, will keep on moving from the traditional soda given than American consumers prefer the alternatives.
This is not the first time that PepsiCo, Inc., altered its ingredients in a bid to lure more consumers and resuscitate to lift flagging sales of Diet Pepsi. The company already attempted to improve their drink by acesulfame potassium to aspartame. Known as ace-K, acesulfame is another artificial sweetener that helps prolong the taste of soda. With the company's new Diet Pepsi, ace-K will still be used, together with the organic sweetener, Splenda.
