Today’s culprit is… Jello’s Chocolate Pudding! Oh wait, no, “pudding snacks”, whatever in the label-regulation-dodging fuck that means.
Posting here because this has quickly become a very common shrinkflation tactic where the manufacturer substitutes fructose/sucrose in their main product with the cheaper aspartame and stevia and calls it “healthy”. There is no sucrose-only version of this product anymore.
However, these shrinkflated products taste bitter, unsweetened and are completely unappetizing to me. So I end up having to look at labels very carefully (usually some thin text at the bottom of the label) to make sure they didn’t sneak in some artificial sweetener.
The strangest part is I haven’t seen or heard of anyone complaining about it, are we in the minority of people for who artificial sweeteners are bitter, like Cilantro that tastes like soap? Both me and my partner find it bitter and unappetizing in any product, but only I have the “cilantro gene”.
I did find these articles on the topic:
https://www.phillymag.com/be-well-philly/2013/08/22/study-fake-sweeteners-taste-disgusting-people/ (the source link is dead, here’s a wayback machine link: https://web.archive.org/web/20130826013630/http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/why-fake-sweeteners-can-taste-funky/)
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120531102334.htm
I can’t stand fake sugar, and it never is not noticeable. But I often find I’m alone in that. We will get popsicles or some new fangled soda, and I’ll immediately taste the bitter alcohol flavor and it ruins the food. My kids and my wife don’t mind, and I haven’t met others who notice. I would rather have something unsweetened than have it taste like stevia or monk fruit or aspartame or sucralose. It all tastes bad.
I think this might be genetic.
I have one of those “bitter super-taster” genes which means that I taste bitterness in things ~80% of people don’t, and things that people do generally think of as bitter might be overwhelmingly so for me, and for me some artificial sweeteners definitely do taste bitter. Not all of them though, so eg. stevia is fine. There’s probably a ton of different mutations that can cause you to taste things differently
I’m gonna be honest, I have the same gene, and it entirely depends on the company’s skill in formulating the product
I’ve never had a shelf stable packaged food that had artificial sugars that ever tasted even “acceptable”, and most soft drinks suffer from the same issue. ENERGY DRINKS however are the sweet spot that everyone should be mimicking, where they use a mix of glucose and acesulfame K so you taste both real sugar and sweetener
I seem to have the same gene, but I’ve only noticed things like splenda and stevia have that nasty bitter taste. All the other sweeteners are fine. Actually, aspartame is bitter, but it’s a good, coffee kind of bitter, but maybe that’s just because I’ve gotten used to it.
You are not alone. I’ve never tried but I bet I could taste just a few granules of fake sugar in a glass of water. I notice it in anything it’s in, regardless of the amount.
It’s genetic. I feel the same way, aspartame tastes like filmy chemically shit to me. I also can’t stand cilantro, how bout you?
Maybe there’s correlation
I don’t have the cilantro gene, but my wife does. So in our sample size of three…
Well it was worth a shot!
Afraid I’m going to have to contradict that one. I rather dislike sucralose/aspertame (don’t like the taste and can notice it when I eat it), but I love cilantro. I cook with it constantly.
Fair enough! Mostly was wondering if they correlated at all, but I also have a ton of other weird… let’s call them “quirks” as well so who even knows.
Genetics is wild sometimes
Generally agreed, but there’s a select few products that manage to use those sweeteners without hitting you with that chemistry-experiment-gone-wrong taste.
I think most products that use artificials just do a 1-for-1 of sugar either in amount or whatever metric for ‘sweetness’ they use, and ignore the other flavors.
My hypothesis is that manufacturers that use them either haven’t figured out or don’t care to use them correctly; people buy the hell out of it cuz low calorie, so I guess there’s not as much incentive to perfect the flavor? …and that the few exceptions - the ones that actually taste good - are just happy accidents lol.
I started noticing after I stopped drinking alcohol. Especially with sweeteners that are literally an alcohol, like maltitol. It tastes like they put rubbing alcohol in it.
All the fake sugars taste off and I can never put my finger on it . It always starts as "this is really sweet” then “what’s that god awful aftertaste?” So much so that I prefer seltzers and the like and are not sweetened by anything . Not alone in this but we are very much a minority