Over on The Conglomerate, Prof. Christine Hurt takes issue with Diet Coke with Splenda:

Diet Coke with Splenda tastes nasty. Remember Tab? Remember how you had never heard the word "aftertaste" and it probably didn't exist until Tab was invented? DCW/S is worse. A colleague who will remain nameless (ok, Scott M.) told me it was amazing. But Scott doesn't like Diet Coke. DCW/S is Diet Coke for people who don't like Diet Coke, but maybe liked Tab.

I can't remember the last time I had Tab. Diet Coke with Splenda reminds me more of Diet Rite, which perhaps not coincidentally, is sweetened with Splenda. A coworker recently noticed the blue-capped bottles among my collection and asked me what I thought. I think it's okay. He thinks it tastes like regular Coke. I disagree; among other things, I don't feel sick after drinking Diet Coke with Splenda.

Ambrosia of the Gods, that's what I call it. Sometimes I drink caffeine-free DC, which is ok. I like DC from a fountain better than a bottle, and a bottle better than a can. I don't know if it has saccharin, which supposedly kills rats in the laboratory, or Nutrasweet, which supposedly causes some sort of memory loss.

Well, I used to routinely use "Diet Coke is the nectar of the gods" as a PGP passphrase everytime I lost a keypair and had to regenerate. Don't expect that to work anymore; those keys are long since gone, and I shifted to negative comments about Philip Greenspun in my passphrases. Even that phased has since passed.

My preferences are different from the professor's, largely because fountain Diet Coke is so inconsistent. As the photos of the work collection show, I tend to favor bottles. Then I'll go to cans. Finally, comes the fountain. I'd much prefer to drink caffeine-free. For whatever reason, the moronic bottling companies in California don't put caffeine-free in the 16.9 oz. or even 20 oz. bottles. On the last family visit at Christmas, I brought a whole bunch of all varieties home. Those were gone by early February.

I've really only kicked the Diet Coke habit once, at my Air Force ROTC field training, where we weren't given much of a choice. And then, only for 29 days.

Anyhow, is there any other popular, non-alcoholic beverage that garners such loyalty among its drinkers? Other than water?

How about Coke Zero or C2?

I haven't tried Coke Zero or C2. I was going to resort to C2 once last semester, when the school's machine, chronically out of Diet Coke until they filled nearly a whole machine with it, was out of Diet Coke. However, I despite the request for C2, I got a regular Coke. And it was hard to get through. That's how I know Diet Coke with Splenda is nothing like regular Coke.

I figure I'll try Coke Zero at some point. Sweetened with aspartame, I'm unsure what to expect.

Coke Zero is pretty horrible, I think. It actually tastes a lot like Diet Coke with Splenda to me, with a weird aftertaste. I don't know if they just loaded up with aspartame or what, but I was less than impressed.