A recent story in The Economist mentions that two major brands, Pepsi and Starbucks, are losing market share and looking for ways to revitalize. This led one commenter in a letter to the editor to point out that Starbucks loses out mostly because they burn their beans to death. I'm not a coffee drinker, but I've often heard the same critique of Starbucks. Unfortunately, as the writer says, there is little choice when Starbucks establishes itself almost literally everywhere.
But while I don't drink coffee, I do drink Pepsi. The article mentions that soda is in a dwindling market, as people switch more to healthy drinks and away from sugary sodas. That's not really a bad thing, but it makes a crucial blunder: Sodas are not sugary. There's hardly a brand of regular soda on the market, if indeed any is left at all, that is sweetened by sugar. Soda has for a long time now been sweetened by corn syrup.
All other things being equal, you're a lot better off ingesting sugar than corn syrup. Soda bottlers switched to corn syrup because it was cheaper, but the time has come to revisit that notion. In this new age where we're learning that corn syrup is really just a disaster, why not switch back to the late great original recipe?
I like soda. I distrust artificial sweeteners (especially aspartame). The idea of living past 40 is also growing on me. Hence, I'd be willing to pay a little extra for the same soda sweetened with sugar.
ID:28346
 Mar 13 2007, 6:22 pm
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Yeah, this very subject (not the market share, but the ill effects of aspartame, high fructose corn syrup, etc.) came up at a family gathering the other night. I drink aspartame-heavy drinks for two reasons: one, at the rate I consume sweet caffeinated beverages, using artificial sweeteners eliminates thousands of calories I would otherwise be ingesting per day, and two, I love the flavors of Pepsi Jazz, which are only diet. If they let me have flavored syrup pumps at my desk, I'd do that. :P
But, I'm still somewhat young. My mother stopped drinking aspartame in the last few years because it was eating up her joints (did you know people have actually been misdiagnosed with fibromyalgia, because of aspartame build up in their connective tissue?), so I know I won't drink it forever. And we here in Omaha have a local brand called Scooters that has been aggressively expanding to the point that they actually bought former Starbucks kiosks. :P It's much better coffee, too. Funnily enough, I've been told by Starhucksters that the Starbucks coffee "proudly brewed" by Barnes & Noble's cafes isn't "real Starbucks" because they're allowed to purchase from suppliers who don't meet the company's exacting standards. While I'll take Scooters or even the Borders Cafe over B&N's offerings, the B&N "Starbucks" is still infinitely more drinkable than the stuff straight from the source. | |
Canadian Pepsi tastes awesome.. not like I've tasted any other kind.
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Corn syrup is sludge. It was a cheap alternative to sugar, but vastly inferior. Interestingly, recent machinations by the corn lobby to get ethanol okayed as a required fuel additive will likely drive corn prices to levels where soda manufacturers may view sugar as viable again. Which would be good.
Aspartame is something of a mystery. There is no reliable medical evidence indicating it is unsafe, but there is plenty of anecdotal evidence indicating it may not be 100% healthy, either. I think limited consumption seems safe enough, but daily consumption *I* wouldn't try. I am not sure how one could "misdiagnose" fibromyalgia, however. Fibromyalgia is sort of a catchall for various pains and fatigue when a more specific diagnosis cannot be reached (kind of like IBS or chronic fatigue syndrome in that respect). It may even indicate a psychosomatic condition as opposed to a physical disorder. Of course, all of this is rarely material to the suffering patient who just wants some relief! Pronounced joint damage seems more consistent with any number of other causes from rheumatoid arthritis to food poisoning (certain bacterias will attack soft tissue). Many of these are degenerative and may rapidly worsen without proper treatment, so she may want to seek a second opinion. | |
Aspartame wreaks havoc with both my mother and me. We both get headaches from it--hers are far worse, since she's sensitive to some weird things. I'll have it in maybe mints at most, but I avoid it in everything I can, and never drink diet sodas. Among other reasons, I find aspartame tastes quite nasty. I haven't had any issues with Splenda, but neither was I a fan of Pepsi Edge.
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As I understand it, the reason we use corn syrup in the US is because the price of sugar is kept artificially high by keeping out foreign competition.
Not only has this led to the corn syrup substitution, but we've apparently lost a lot of candy company business, as candy companies pick up and move to countries where sugar is much cheaper. The consequences, may they always be unintended! | |
I distrust artificial sweeteners I knew a guy who'd have seizures if he ingested something like Sweet & Low and I've heard many more horror stories.... I don't trust them either. Plus, they taste like crap compared to the real stuff. | |
Oh, my mother wasn't the one diagnosed with fibromyalgia... she just had crippling pain in her knees that cleared up after she'd been off the 'tame for some time.
I was referring to other cases I'm aware of, just to illustrate how bad the joint pain from aspartame can get. When I talk about misdiagnosis, I'm talking about people who were given the big "you have fibro" speech by their doctors, given a bunch of treatment options, and basically prepared for a life of pain and suffering... then somebody else told them they might want to stop drinking diet soda, and the pain went away. COULD be psychosomatic... probably is, in some cases... but I've run into enough unrelated incidents to think that something might be there. And here's a piece of "anecdotal evidence" for you: the FDA chief in office when aspartame was approved shortly thereafter "retired" to a cushy, higher paying position with the Monsanto Corporation... makers of NutraSweet. Proof of anything? Nope, but should be enough to give you pause | |
So yeah, I haven't really been a heavy "soda" (you silly non-Ohioans and your non-"pop" slang for the beverage) drinker in a long time. I'll occasionally pop open a Pepsi or Mountain Dew, but mostly I'll drink orange juice, apple juice, or (my favorite and most expensive choice) those lovely energy drinks. Any supposed health benefits of the energy drinks really get bypassed by me; I drink them merely because I think that they taste better than the other beverage alternatives.
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Bah. In Ohio they sell heathen caffeine-free Mountain Dew. Ergo, Ohio does not count!
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You mean to say some people actually drink that stuff for the FLAVOR?
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Well, if you're drinking Mountain Dew for the caffeine, you really don't get the point either. Coffee has twice as much.
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I don't drink coffee. I want Dew.
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Autopends what you're standpoint is. Starbucks "brews" dozens of different types of coffee from different regions.. Latin America.. Asia Pacific.. Single Origin blends and multi-region blends etc. etc... and each is processed in a different way, resulting in different flavours. To say it tastes "burnt" obviously shows that you have no idea what you're tasting. All coffees have different aromas, acidity, body and taste.. be it light or heavy bodied, bold, smooth, elegant, herbally, earthy... some darker roasts such as Italian and French roast will taste "roasty" or "burnt" as people say, because that's what they're meant to taste like, coming from the atmosphere that the coffee beans are farmed from and the way they're processed.
Starbucks doesn't roast the hell out of their beans. There's a significant process that is followed and treated for each and every single blend that is offered. Edit: And the "burnt" flavour is probably because the retarded barista overdrew the brewing process. The coffee tends to go bitter if it's left sitting for more than 40 minutes. It's useless after an hour. Or they ground it too fine for the means of brewing. (Drip/Filter, French Press etc.) | |
"If you don't like how it tastes, you're either ignorant, or the fool who served it to you mishandled it." -- how the wine industry justifies selling vintages for hundreds of dollars a bottle that their own self-proclaimed experts claim contains "notes of" things like gasoline and leather. Let's not bring that kind of crap into the world of coffee!
I believe what he's refering to is the infamous Starbucks "aftertaste" or "undertaste", and it has indeed been described as a "burnt taste". It's characteristically very bitter, which is the taste that coffee acquires after it's been left on a heater or otherwise overbrewed, but it is indeed something that's present in all their espresso drinks (I can't personally vouch for its presence in their regular coffees), so yes, you're right that it must be part of their process... that explains HOW it got there, but not why. Simply put, it's not a pleasant taste. I'd say the people who can actually stand to drink it are the ones with no idea what they're tasting. They might have learned the lore behind it and they might have bought into the "it's so trendy so it must taste good" mindset, where every time the intelligent part of their brain starts to say, "Blech! Tastes like burnt sewage!", the part of their brain that either wants to be popular and fit in... or be hip and elitist... goes "Quiet, you fool! This is Starbucks you're talking about!" You drink anything often enough and you can get used to it, though... which is how so many starschmucks have convinced themselves that they're paying money for a good product... some of us simply prefer to keep drinking things that taste good the first time. (Of course, alternately, we could agree to treat personal taste as a matter of... well... personal taste, but that would preclude you being able to tell people who don't like what you like that they "don't know what they're tasting", followed by a lecture.) | |
As I said, I don't drink coffee myself. I'm merely pointing out what many quite intelligent people have said. I used the word "burnt" loosely, but they have more specifically said that the beans are overroasted. Longer-roasted coffee, incidentally, has less caffeine, so people who think espresso is gonna give them a kick should just stick with black coffee.
And point of fact, Sinyc, even if they weren't overroasting their beans, it doesn't matter if Starbucks is merely brewing trendy coffees from different regions. The simple fact of it is, they have no coffee that does not have the overroasted taste, regardless of how the taste got there. People have complained that they can't get a great-tasting cup of coffee there, which means they have to go out of their way (sometimes too far to be feasible) to go somewhere else since Starbucks is everywhere. As it is, Dunkin Donuts and now McDonald's are consistently rated higher for their coffee, which should be a red flag to Starbucks, who specialize in it. Continuing to rely on "the Starbucks experience" to stay in business is only going to kill them, if the primary part of that experience is coffee that's inferior to several other common chains. But we should be so lucky: If Starbucks takes too big a hit, Seattle will implode, taking Redmond with it. Crack off Berkeley and sink it into the sea, and we'll be well on the way toward a better, saner world. That just leaves the task of walling up France. | |
Heh. I know (only some?) McD's in the States serve Seattle's Best coffee. Who is the parent company of Seattle's Best? Three guesses. =)
Up here in Canada, McDonalds had consistently better coffee than even Tim Hortons, but switched to a darker roast from a source that must've been cheaper, because it was nowhere near as good from that point on. | |
And ye goth in heathen, I wish Dunkin' Donuts would move into the midwest... more for their doughnuts than their coffee. I'm so sick of Krusted Krap.
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Krispy Kremes are tasty, but the sheer lack of variety annoys me. Then again, Dunkin Donuts did discontinue strawberry creme.
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Starbucks is vile, vile coffee. I don't think any of the supposed Seattle connoisseurs know what the flying firetruck they're talking about. If you want that much charcoal in your water you might as well just stick your lips up to the filter in a fish tank.