Coca-Cola Life and Comparison

Coca-Cola Life, or Green Coke, or Coke Green, or whatever else you want to call it saw a slow roll out to several countries over the past couple of years. Well, I finally saw a can when I went down south of the border for the weekend, so I just had to pick up a case and see what the fuss is all about. For the review I also decided to pick up a can of regular Coke and do a side by side comparison. Unfortunately I couldn't procure a diet one for the full comparison, but oh well.

Taste

Off the bat the Green Coke is completely different. The mouthfeel is smoother and more rounded due to the reduced carbonation. It feels softer on the tongue. The head it produces when first poured also seems to be of finer texture with smaller bubbles than the regular Coke.

At first the taste seems to be the same, but after the immediate sweet hit on the tongue, comes a subtle sweetener taste which lingers well into the finish. The sweetener taste is not as pronounced as the normal Diet Coke, but somewhere in between the Diet one and the regular one.

The initial sweetness feels more candy-like, yet clean...like sucking on cane sugar. The cane sugar sweetness doesn't seem to stick around in the finish, but the Stevia does.

Other Differences

The Green Coke is labelled as a reduced calorie soda and a can of it clocks in at 90 calories and 24 grams of sugar, whereas the same can of regular Coke is 140 calories and 39 grams of sugar. The Green one also seems to have a bit more Sodium (35 mg) than the regular Coke (25 mg).

My Take

Yes, the Green Coke caught my attention and yes, I looked forward to trying it and reviewing it, but to be perfectly honest, I wouldn't buy it again and here are the 2 reasons why:

1. Mexican Cola is better - it is made entirely with cane sugar and the overall taste is much, much better than the Green Coke and the regular Coke
2. There is still a sweetener aftertaste - if I wanted a sweetener aftertaste, I would stick to the normal Diet Coke and avoid consuming any sugar at all

I love the packaging, but Coca-Cola Life fails to impress me. I think Pepsi pulled it off better with Next, which I used to purchase a lot of on each trip to the US until we got it in Canada.