Count me in as a big-time fan of this development. Corn syrup consumption has skyrocketed in recent years, and contributes to early-onset obesity, diabetes, and other health maladies. The real cane sugar, while hardly a "health food," is a much, much better option.

Kudos, Jones!

At any rate, I figured I'd give a rundown of my preferences in Coca-Cola brand cola drinks. In this review, I'm steering clear of the flavored versions in the rundown list (though I will visit them at the end of this post).

1. Coca-Cola Classic. This is very closely related to the Coke of my childhood. I'm still convinced that the "Classic" version is not the exact recipe that Coca-Cola tried to retire in the 80s, but it's close enough for now. Perhaps the taste change is due to the switch away from glass bottles to the current polyethyene models. But it's still what I like: the sugar that's not too sweet, the clean aftertaste.
2. Caffeine-Free Coca-Cola Classic. They manage to make this taste remarkably similar to the caffeinated version, though this particular version is often hard to find at most retailers.
3. Diet Coke Sweetened with Splenda. Sam turned me on to this, and it's not bad. The taste comes remarkably close to my beloved Classic Coke, though the sucralose doesn't present the same liquid texture as the "full octane" version. Also, the aftertaste is still odd to me. But it gets the job done: the taste is quite similar to Classic (though it's easier to detect the cinnamon in the recipe than with the sugar-sweetened variants), and it's less sugar in my diet. Also quite hard to find in a lot of retail outlets.
4. Coke C2. This is Coke's "half-and-half" drink: half of the sweeteners are sugars, the other half is aspartame. As such, it's not bad, but there's still a bit of aspartame aftertaste that's unnatural, and the texture is more akin to a sparkling dry wine. The taste is also a bit different than the first three, as it doesn't seem to be purely derived from the Classic formula. If I were a higher-up at Coca-Cola, I'd switch out the aspartame for sucralose for a better taste and texture. This used to be easy to find (summer and fall of 2004), but has since become difficult to find.
5. Diet Coke. This drink is very popular with people at my workplace (2/3 of the slots in the Coke vending machine are reserved for Diet Coke, with the others divided between Classic, Cherry, Diet with Lemon, Diet with Lime, Sprite and Diet Sprite). Sweetened with aspartame, I truly dislike this variation on the Coke formula. Aspartame is so sickeningly sweet and just tastes like a chemical to me. I just can't quite get over it - blech!
6. Caffeine-Free Diet Coke. Why does this exist? First you remove the sugar, then you remove the caffeine? If people drink this for the taste, fine - but it tastes awful.

As I mentioned before, there are flavored variants of the Coca-Cola family. I like Coke with Lime (sugared version) and Cherry Coke (sugared version) quite a bit - they're old standbys, though homemade cherry Coke is much more flavorful and rewarding. Vanilla Coke tastes wrong to me, mainly because the vanilla flavor seems very unnatural. There are diet versions of the Lime, Cherry and Vanilla versions, as well as a Diet Coke with Lemon. All rank really low with me.

As you can probably tell, I'm no fan of artificial sweeteners. Firstly, they're chemicals that have little-to-no long-term exposure facts to review what harm they do to the body. Yes, sugar isn't great for you, either - especially refined sugar - but at least it's naturally derived from a plant. Sucralose is derived from sugar, and actually seems to taste okay, though I'm not about to start substituting it for th real McCoy for things other than soft drinks.

Any thoughts? Please share them in the comments.