Diet Pepsi made without aspartame is now available, according to a statement released Monday from PepsiCo., marking the biggest change to the beverage in three decades.
Pepsi's marquee diet soda will no longer be sweetened with aspartame, instead it will use a blend of sucralose.
Sucralose is the same artificial sweetener that's typically in yellow packets, branded Splenda, while aspartame is the artificial sweetener usually in blue packets, branded as Equal or NutraSweet.
"Diet cola drinkers in the U.S. told us they wanted aspartame-free Diet Pepsi and we're delivering," Seth Kaufman, a senior vice president at PepsiCo, said in a statement.
Consumers should check for an "aspartame free" logo before purchasing because some stores may have the old versions stocked until they sell out.
Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi and Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi will also make the switch, which the company said is in response to customer complaints about aspartame. The change also comes amid a sales drop for the diet drinks.
PepsiCo Inc., facing declining Diet Pepsi sales amid a customer backlash against the controversial sweetener, started reformulating the recipe about two years ago.
Keeping the taste mostly unchanged was difficult, said Seth Kaufman, a senior vice president at Pepsi who oversaw the project.
The new Diet Pepsi swaps one artificial sweetener for another. Pepsi already offers a low-calorie option made with stevia, a plant-based sweetener, called Pepsi True.
“It’s the No. 1 thing that our customers have been calling about,” said Seth Kaufman.
PepsiCo has spent years trying to develop a new Diet Pepsi sweetener that would still appeal to consumer tastes. The move would seem to put pressure on arch-rival Coke, which also has seen Diet Coke sales slump, to make a similar move.
Artificial sweeteners have been the subject of bad press, largely due to a 1970s study linking them to cancer in lab rats.
But there have been no studies linking the sweeteners to human health risks, according to the federal government.
