Coca-Cola Zero and Diet Coke With Splenda. $1.25 per 20-ounce bottle or $3.49 per six-pack of 12-ounce cans.

Bonnie: Choose your poison, I mean, artificial sweetener. That's Coke's new approach to marketing diet sodas. Coke feels that savvy consumers are artificial sweetener aficionados who know the taste differences among sweeteners and who will buy their artificially flavored, carbonated drinks based on that.

Coke's marketing folks say that Zero is aimed at people in their 20s who feel "diet" on their cans is a stigma and who like the taste of Classic Coke. They purport it tastes more like Classic Coke than their other diet colas. Zero is sweetened with both aspartame and acesulfame potassium. Coke's new Splenda-sweetened diet cola is aimed at the folks who are loyal to that particular sweetener.

Me? I could hardly swallow a sip of either. But then I'm not a fan of any artificial sweetener nor therefore any diet soda.

Carolyn: The "gourmetization" of American food and drink that began with wine and cheese, and then moved on to coffee, beer and pasta sauce, now includes artificial sweeteners.

The result: There are now not one, not two, but three different types of Diet Coke, seven if you include the ones with added flavors.

In addition to the original Diet Coke made with aspartame, Coca-Cola has just introduced a Diet Coke made with Splenda, and another, called Coke Zero, made with aspartame and ace-K.

The Splenda one caters to the apparently growing crowd of people who will buy only diet products containing Splenda — either because they like the taste or the idea that it's an artificial sweetener that's made from sugar. Zero is designed for young men who want or need diet foods but who would rather wear a dress to a football game than be seen eating or drinking something with diet in the name. The similarly named and formulated Pepsi One is designed to appeal to this same childish crowd of boy-men who are just weaning themselves off Kool-Aid, hence Zero's greater sweetness compared to the other Diet Cokes.

In a side-by-side taste comparison between Zero, Diet Coke With Splenda and regular Diet Coke, Diet Coke With Splenda tasted the most like regular Coke. And Diet Coke had the flattest (i.e., least interesting) taste.

In other words, these new Diet Cokes are all better than the Diet Coke we all know — and thought we loved.

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