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
My husband finds artificial sweeteners bitter as well, including stevia. I don’t. I wouldn’t doubt if there’s something genetic at play.
Even artificially sweetened products tend to be sickly sweet to me though. I’d love a version with less sweetener, period.
Edit: Holy misfiring autocorrect Batman
My husband finds artificial sweeteners bitter as well, including stevia. I don’t. I wouldn’t doubt if there’s something genetic at play.
I was just speculating about this in another comment. I’ve got one of those “bitter super-taster” genes and I definitely have the same hunch
Coca-Cola does this same thing for years with some sort of Fanta and Sprite. It’s general now. They want you to eat and drink chemicals instead of bad food.
That’s why I only eat food that’s not made out of chemicals. Conceptual food that is. I just ate the idea of a hamburger
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’ll immediately taste the bitter alcohol flavor
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
