I was reading the Wikipedia entry on Diet Coke, and it said something about how some overseas versions of Diet Coke/Coke Light are sweetened with a type of sweetener known as cyclamate. Many people apparently claim that these versions taste better than the US formulation.

Cyclamates were apparently banned from the US in the 1970s after some tests showed it to cause certain health hazards, but many have refuted these claims. Indeed, these claims don't sound much worse than the ones that have floated around about aspartame.

I never knew about the existance of cyclamtes until recently, and I must say this interests me.

I didn't know that they still used cyclamates anywhere for a sweetener. The FDA banned them in 1969. From what I understand the study that got cyclamates banned as a sweetener in the US was later determined to be faulty, but there was enough backlash that the soda companies never considered trying to get them "un-banned" and going back to using them again.

andy

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Give me some cane sugar Pepsi in a glass bottle!!

I remember what Diet drinks tasted like before 1969. They were fantastic. Fresca was the best and Tab was not bad either. Fizzes also had cyclamates and they were pulled at the same time. I remember one night all cyclamates were pulled from the shelves and the bottlers actually broke all bottles and never reused most of them because the bottles were labeled with "contains sodium cyclamates". From what I understand cyclamates are being reconsidered by the FDA. Abbott Labs filled a motion and it is being considered. The product is legal in most counties, including Canada and the EU. In Canada you can even buy the product Sugar Twin which is made there with cyclamates. I have also learned that it has also turned up in some diet drinks in Europe. I remember the scare that was caused in the 1970's when consumers thought that saccharin would be banned and people headed to the stores in force to buy diet drinks thinking they thought would be pulled without notice again.

[ 07-17-2005, 02:04 PM: Message edited by: bigrich ]

As a kid (circa 1965) I tasted Diet Pepsi sweetened with Sodium Cyclamate and I thought it tasted great! IIRC, the "pre-sweetended Kool-Aid" used that as a sweetener as well and tasted good too!

I welcome it back... but it will probably face stiff competition from the Nutra-Sweet & Splenda lobbyists.