Never liked the 20oz plastic Coke bottles. The aluminum cans and 2liter plastic tasted fine though.

It is true: sweetness is very different across the globe due to nation preferences

The video explains how the gas based mass spectrometers he had (indirect) access to don't normally pick up nonvolatile compounds like tannins. It was a big breakthrough that since he didn't have cocoa leaf extract, and he basically nailed everything else, he couldn't really understand what he was missing until he realised the extract would likely contain tannins.

So there may be other nonvolatile compounds which nevertheless impact the flavour profile. While a lot of flavour is in your nose, not all of it is...

This is wrong.

Same with perfume knock-offs

Spectrometer doesn’t tell you quantities, mixes, what have you.

You can emulate 90% of the first smell but never in life you can replicate entire bouquet, aftersmell, propriety molecules, etc.

He doesn't compare the mass spec of his final product to a real coke, unless I missed it.

Taste buds can detect chemicals in as concentrations as low as a few parts per million, I dunno.

Mass spec is indeed demonstrated multiple times

I think if you believe this I'd recommend trying it yourself.

I've done this blinded with colas, and it's pretty easy to tell the difference between Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Pepsi, and Diet Pepsi. You might not know which is which without some history drinking them, but they all taste very distinct by themselves.

Really disagree that these are indistinguishable parity products, or that most people would not be obviously able to tell the difference between them.

This is irrelevant and misleading. Just because many people cannot tell flavors apart doesn’t mean that the products are parity and are marketing differentiated.

Sure the majority of people cannot tell flavor notes apart but there exists a certain % of the population that can very reliably distinguish different tastes. Wine sommeliers, fine dining, food science are all professions which require a sensitive palate and smell and it is an over simplification to talk about sodas tasting the same for the majority of people as if it implies there is no difference or speciality in crafting taste.

Yea, you've never drank the off brand stuff I see. It's generally significantly different to me.

Most people prefer Pepsi's taste. Unless the brands are revealed, then the brand recognition sets in and your brain rewards you more for choosing Coca Cola (c)

So you can taste it, but that doesn't matter in the end.

Supposedly Jell-O was originally to be clear but they needed the food coloring to convince your brain you weren’t just tasting sugar and citric acid instead of the little bit of flavor they added per recipe.

And that's just bottlers. Fountain soda is also diluted from concentrate. So local water can affect the flavor, as can the calibration of the soda fountain. The better retailers will carbon-filter their water and check calibration regularly but the average convenience store? Varies wildly.

Random tidbit from my youth: when the Coke truck would come deliver a crate of Coke bottles to our house in Mexico, each Coke bottle had a little stick of sugarcane in it. I don't think it was like that in all places in Mexico. Street vendors would have giant unlabeled jugs of Coke, and sell it to you by pouring it into a plastic bag with a straw in it.

I was more imagining a completely pedestrian sourced sample. Those are likely large aggregate pools to minimize heterogeneity. Looking for something like, “Go to corner store, buy 12 pack canned CokeCola (with aspartame), dilute 1:10, measure”

Cola nut also contains caffeine, so quite an energy drink between the two.

It was a reformulation from a popular drink where wine was infused with coca leaves and kola nuts, popular with Pope Leo XIII who appeared on poster advertisements for it. (and many others)

Georgia passed prohibition and coca-cola was an invention to replace the now banned beverages.

No, I think my hate (Edit: Hate seems a strong word, I meant dislike perhaps, Its just that I usually blame chem for any grades loss because thats the reality more on that later) in chemistry stems from the fact that people are able to grasp it naturally for some reason and chem is considered very high scoring so its depressing and you resent the subject if you can't achieve score in chem (mind you, that where I live, the individual subjects score don't matter but the aggregate, so in essense, chem has equal weightage as much as maths or physics while being really simpler but still requires a fundamental grasp which I find unintuitive at times and somehow unable to understand so the system feels a little unfair to me at times in the unique situation but oh well) I still feel like I dont study chem that much when the feedback loop just exited when I was studying and didnt get marks so I decided to stop studying it that much but now I am starting to genuinely focus 100% on chem most of the time because I just have to remember a few things and instant boost in my marks (or so I am thinking, we will see how this goes but it seems to be the best utilization of my time right now)

I could probably blame some parts of the education system but I don't think that the system can probably change regarding it. Still, I just wanted to share my frustrations regarding it where everything kind of becomes overcompetitive while you have a hobby in computers and I feel like genuine passion towards computing/linux and other things and want to make it a job because in my case I feel like money's valuable only in the end to do something that I enjoy and in this case, I can get both paid and enjoy without having to go through a retirement phase (or so my thoughts on FIRE, I'd still invest/save most of the money as money is rather not the big part of why I am doing this in my opinion) and Chem doesn't have anything related to it for what its worth.

I still have to go read chemistry though. But I don't know why but something in this video genuinely clicked chemistry for me where I could watch a 100 videos like this (although the point can be that I am now doing it out of my own free will and not a rigorous syllabus with tests and rewards/punishments systems basically)

Sorry for the yap, just wanted to get it off my chest. I have nothing against chem as a subject tho, I am sure that its interesting and this video sorts of proves it but I feel like I am more inclined towards software engineering but it sucks that I have to study chem to go do what I actually want in life (which requires a degree for maximal benefit which requires good marks aka a decent/huge focus on chem as well right now)

> But cheers for showing support to high quality science content on YT. Appreciation is a great instinct to nurture.

Thanks! I appreciate it, Have a nice day!

(Also edit once again) but I want to touch on the reason why I feel appreciating it even more so is because a single guy is able to compete against (essentially) a 200 Billion $ GIANT.

Such levels of individual freedom and achievements should be celebrated by the society just for the sake of it (and in this case we can see some other benefits as well as I told in the initial comment)

They empower Individual youth and Individuals in general and its very empowering. Generally the same reason I love Open source as well. Bringing real change to the world and leaving a fingerprint on Humanity I suppose. Even small things like these provide me and maybe others hope against darkness created by system of corruption being witnessed most around the world and monopolization/ big businesses doing shady practices most often.

There's a lot of reasons Carbonated Sugar Water, Inc. isn't a $200B business, and Coca Cola (tm) is, that "just a lot of sugar" doesn't even begin to explain.

that's a very oversimplification of it. how people can be willing to consume a beverage that can be used to eat the corrosion off of battery terminals is beyond me. so they'd be missing that on top of the sugar, unless of course they are drinking the sugar free versions, then it's just the battery cleanser