A joke in the UK is that the unofficial slogan of Pepsi is 'yeah fine whatever mate' because when you order Coca-Cola in a pub and they (for some reason) stock Pepsi instead they always have to ask 'is Pepsi ok?'.

is it? i used to not care but now it'll give me pause. might just stick with water over pepsi

My cousin who was one of the people giving the challenge also said they were always supposed to give Pepsi second, because after the bitterness of the coke first, the relative sweetness of Pepsi would be slightly refreshing, even if the drinker liked the bitter taste

>so if you're just taking a few quick sips (as most taste tests are set up), you may prefer the sweeter taste of Pepsi because it stands out more, but if you're drinking a whole bunch, the sweeter taste of Pepsi can feel cloying.

This is not about drinking or sipping though. This is about people prefer Pepsi in blind tests and Coke in unblinded tests.

So this explanation would only make sense if the blind tests are also using sipping and the unblinded tests are using drinking.

> So this explanation would only make sense if the blind tests are also using sipping and the unblinded tests are using drinking.

Yeah that’s what they’re doing.

> So this explanation would only make sense if the blind tests are also using sipping and the unblinded tests are using drinking.

The blind tests are using small, sipping quantities.

People purchasing soft drinks for at home generally are drinking them.

The article draws a distinction between blind taste-test ("Pepsi Challenge") behavior and consumers' purchasing habits/general preferences.

I think you are saying the same thing the original comment was saying.

The parent comment says that sipping gives a different experience to drinking which would explain preference for Coke vs Pepsi in blind vs unblinded testing.

I argue that this doesn't make sense as an explanation, as blind vs unblinded testing is orthogonal to sipping vs drinking.

So, if this is the explanation, they'd have to set the testsa very particular way, for seemingly no reason (expept, perhaps, such manipulation of results).

Yeah it’s like the difference between competition bbq and craft bbq. Competition stuff is packed with flavor since the judge will get 1 bite. Craft bbq is all about eating well and is balanced.

Speaking of which, “people prefer” is really vague (if not a weasel wordy) in this kind of studies-say-aphorism.

If there were 6 subjects, does it mean “5-6 of them changed their answer depending on the experiment” or “2 consistently preferred coke, 2 consistently preferred pepsi, and 2 don’t really care but bring the vote to a 4/6 majority based on confounding factors”

Generally most wine magazines don't publish the scores of the really bad stuff and the makers don't send it in for review. Most cellar tracker users also have fairly high average ratings, simply because they know what they like and know how to source it.

Speaking only for myself, I drank Coke for years because, well, of course I did, Pepsi is the "inferior" drink.

But at some point, I realized that every time a restaurant told me they only had Pepsi, instead of being annoyed, I was actually happy. Only then did I realize that I actually prefer Pepsi, and have been drinking Pepsi ever since. (I have quite a sweet tooth, so the fact that Pepsi is much sweeter means it tastes much better.)

I literally had to learn this about myself by observing my gut reaction to being told a restaurant only had Pepsi, because Coke being obviously better was so ingrained in me.

There's plenty more colas for more refined tastes, starting with Coca-Cola signature mixers. They were originally created for bartenders, but I think majority of people would pretty easily tell them apart from Cola and Pepsi in a blind tasting.