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 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.