Don't ask me why the name is capitalized. It's not an acronymn for anything, so for the sake of this review, we'll be using "Sans" instead of kowtowing to marketing hype.

Sans is a product of the New Perfection Beverage Company, which just happens to be a division of Big Red. The name seems to be inspired by the French term "sans" which translates to "without," obviously referring to the lack of sugar/HFCS used in the drink.

Right off the bat, I'm attracted to the very clean packaging design. Lots of white space, with a good use of accent colors to denote flavor, supporting the "without" concept. Excellent use of fonts and style. Thumbs up to the design team!

The entire Sans lineup uses Truvia as their stevia-derived sweetener. This version was developed as part of a joint project between The Coca-Cola Company and Cargill. Coke has used it in Sprite Green. The company goes out of their way to point out that Sans contains "zero calories, zero artificial sweeteners, zero artificial colors or flavors, and zero genetically modified organisms, but unlike current stevia sodas on the market, Sans Soda contains no erythritol."

Currently, there are 5 flavors in the Sans lineup: Cola, Orange, Lemon Lime, Black Cherry, and Root Beer. Here's our quick thoughts on each flavor.

Sans Cola

Sans Cola starts out with the right color, scent, and initial flavor that you'd associate with a cola flavor. After that, you are greeted by quite a bitter taste at the back of your mouth, continuing on to the aftertaste. Colas are hard to do in diet form, especially when you break away from the established leaders in the field. Sans Cola reflects that.

Sans Cola ingredients
Triple filtered carbonated water, caramel color, tartaric acid, rebiana (natural sweetener), natural flavors, natural caffeine, citric acid and gum acacia

A 12 oz. can contains 0 calories, 0 g fat, 0 mg sodium, and 1 g carbs (0 g sugars). Caffeine content is relatively low at 2.91 mg/oz.

Sans Orange

Curiously, Sans Orange is not orange in color, but mostly clear with a slight cloudy look. I actually like the subtle orange flavor, which contrasts the heavy, syrupy tastes you typically find in orange pop. Carbonation isn't too overpowering, either. If you are used to full calorie beverages, than the use of stevia will be obvious in the aftertaste, which tends to stay on your tongue. Don't hate it. Don't love it.

Sans Orange ingredients
Triple filtered carbonated water, rebiana (natural sweetener), citric acid, natural flavors and natural colors, beta carotene

A 12 oz. can contains 0 calories, 0 g fat, 0 mg sodium, and 1 g carbs (0 g sugars).

Sans Lemon Lime

Often, lemon lime drinks are the hardest to formulate when it comes to diet; there just isn't a whole lot of flavor there to mask the sweeteners. As expected, Sans Lemon Lime is clear and has citrus scent, though it seems to be a bit medicinal as well. It's quite carbonated as you take a sip. I'd say it is zesty, but it's also quite artificial tasting. Probably the worst of the bunch.

Sans Lemon Lime ingredients
Triple filtered carbonated water, citric acid, rebiana (natural sweetener), natural flavors and natural colors

A 12 oz. can contains 0 calories, 0 g fat, 0 mg sodium, and 1 g carbs (0 g sugars).

Sans Black Cherry

For some reason, black cherry tends to translate pretty well in the diet realm. Such is the case with Sans Black Cherry, which does a nice job of producing a robust flavor that masks much of the bitter aftertaste you tend to get with stevia combinations. The drink itself is a light red color, translucent. Probably my favorite of the Sans flavors!

Sans Black Cherry ingredients
Triple filtered carbonated water, citric acid, rebiana (natural sweetener), natural flavors and natural colors

A 12 oz. can contains 0 calories, 0 g fat, 0 mg sodium, and 1 g carbs (0 g sugars).

Sans Root Beer

This root beer has a great scent; not too sweet, but just right. The beverage itself is colored light brown. Initial sippage produces a good root beer flavor, but then it's hampered by the sweetener. If you are used to diet root beers, you probably won't have a problem. However, if you are a root beer fan looking to cut calories, this might not be your cup of tea.

Sans Root Beer ingredients
Triple filtered carbonated water, caramel color, rebiana (natural sweetener), natural flavors, citric acid and gum acacia

A 12 oz. can contains 0 calories, 0 g fat, 0 mg sodium, and 1 g carbs (0 g sugars).

So there's a look at the 5 flavors. If I were to sort them in order of preference, I'd start with Black Cherry, the follow that up with Root Beer, Orange, Cola, and Lemon Lime.

My first love is not diet soda, I will admit. However, I am impressed with some of the flavor combinations offered here with Sans, namely the Black Cherry and Root Beer entries. For those looking for a no calorie option without the use of our typical array of artificial sweeteners, this stevia alternative is worth exploring and diving into! I hope we see more alternatives like this in the marketplace soon. Given the shift away from unhealthy drinks, it may be the only growth the carbonated soft drink world may experience for a while.

Official Website: SansSoda.com

Per Coke's press release about the new drink, Sprite Green "has 50 calories per 8.5-ounce serving and 5% lemon juice. Sprite Green was created to appeal to active young adults and will be launched in two U.S. cities this month in distinctive 8.5-ounce aluminum bottles. Initial availability will be limited to teen and young adult-oriented locations and events with a broader rollout planned for early 2009. Sprite Green complements the Sprite brand's leading lemon-lime and zero-calorie lemon-lime sparkling beverages."

The big hype about Sprite Green is the use of Truvia, which is the trade name for a version of a stevia-based sweetener created by The Coca-Cola Company and Cargill. Using what they consider a "natural sweetener" (there's some debate on that), you can lower the calorie count on a typical bottle of Sprite.

Sprite Green aluminum bottle

We were able to find a bottle of Sprite Green here in Chicago, though it did not look anything like the aluminum bottle illustration that Coke provided when they announced the drink. Our version was packaged in a 12 oz. green glass bottle with a narrow neck. A pretty sharp look… if you ignore the ugly plastic twist cap on top.

Upon opening the bottle, well, it smells like Sprite. It even looks like Sprite, with that clear, bubbly appearance. But what about that all-important taste experience?

Upon first sip, it's actually pretty good. Tastes pretty much like the Sprite you know and love. But then the floor drops out and you realize that your are on some gruesome amusement park ride of flavor doom! Now, granted, this is a diet beverage, so a non-attractive taste is to be expected. But given that this drink has a stevia-powered aftertaste, maybe I wasn't expecting exactly what my mouth was saying… which was pretty much, "what did you just do to me?"

The aftertaste ruins Sprite Green. At first, it's not really there like most diet beverages. It sort of sneaks up on you. But this delayed rancidness makes up for it in the end. The taste is actually quite dry and cleanish as far as texture, however the flavor is very bitter and non-food-like. Almost like you accidentally swallowed some hair spray. It's an odd collection of substances that sort of sit on your tongue, waiting to be scrubbed off. I can now understand why Sprite Green has been launched in "limited markets" and isn't really taking the country by storm. Yuck!

However, if you are still interested in this drink, you'll find that a 12 oz. bottle contains 70 calories, 160 mg of sodium (Wow… that's quite a bit!), and 18 g of carbs (17 g of which are sugars). The drink is caffeine-free.

Sprite Green
Carbonated water, lemon juice from concentrate, sugar, natural flavors, sodium polyphosphates, sodium citrate, potassium sorbate (to protect taste), rebiana (stevia extract), salt, malic acid, ascorbic acid (to protect color)

The combination of stevia and sugar makes Sprite Green sort of a hybrid drink when it comes to sweeteners. Hmm, where have we seen this before? Oh, that's right… Coca-Cola C2 and Pepsi Edge. Anyone remember those drinks from 2004? They crashed and burned, not only based on taste, but also on need. In the end, they weren't. The same seems to be true regarding Sprite Green. It's a beverage without a real purpose.

That said, I really wish Sprite Green was better than it tasted. Those used to the aftertaste experiences of diet sodas may welcome it more than we did, however if we were looking for a lemon lime-flavored drink with the benefits of stevia, we'd probably choose Zevia over Coke's entry.

From a health perspective, diet soda is often scorned for reduced-calorie taste and added artificial sweeteners. But whether the craving is for something sweet or a beverage to drink with your favorite thin crust pizza, many of us have that occasional yearning for a carbonated beverage (even "healthy" people). It is no wonder that the diet soda industry is rapidly growing. The quest is long and hard to find a sweet beverage that won't kill you in the long run from diabetes (sugar) or cancer (artificial sweeteners).

A client recently introduced me to a product called Zevia, one of the first natural zero calorie sodas, predating recent releases from both Coke & Pepsi. All diet sodas have some form of sweetener in them to offset the lack of white sugar. Zevia contains a sweetener called stevia. There has been some controversy about stevia, but overall, it is my opinion that it is a better option than sucralose (Splenda), aspartame (NutraSweet), acesulfame potassium or Ace-K (Sunette), and cyclamate (Sweet'N Low in Canada) because it is a product found in nature with no major chemical alternations.

When a product claims that it is natural it means that they do not include ingredients such as refined sugars, refined flours, milled grains, hydrogenated oils, sweeteners, food colors, or flavorings. In other words, no artificial substance has been added. Stevia is an herb in the sunflower family, native to subtropical and tropical South America and Central America. For centuries, the Guarani Native Americans of Paraguay and Brazil used stevia as a sweetener in native foods and medicinal teas. The extract from the stevia leaf has no calories, no effect on blood sugar levels, and is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar. Some stevia extracts may have a bitter aftertaste at high concentrations. According to their website, Zevia is formulated with erythritol, a natural sugar alcohol which counteracts this effect.

So, from a health perspective, this product is better for you than diet sodas with artificial sweeteners. But, let me be clear from nutrition standpoint, it is not good to drink this type of product in excess. All things in moderation. There is not much harm in drinking this product, but there is also not much nutrition benefit either. In other words, don't go drinking a 6-pack every day. Your body needs water and lots of it. No beverage will ever be able to supplement the pure need for water. Reserve drinking Zevia for those times when you want something special and "just gotta have something sweet."

As far as flavors are concerned, Zevia now makes seven different flavors. They originally only had four, but have recently expanded their product line. In order of my favorite flavors, here's a look at how they taste and what's inside…

Dr. Zevia

Dr. Zevia is the newest addition to the product line. By the name you can see that it is meant to be similar in flavoring to Diet Dr Pepper. Personally I am a big fan of the Dr Pepper flavor, so it is no wonder why this one reached the top of my list. As far as matching flavors to the Dr Pepper line, Dr. Zevia matches closely in flavor with Diet Dr Pepper Cherry. It has stronger cherry flavor than regular Dr. Pepper. Overall, I would definitely buy this flavor again.

Dr. Zevia Ingredients:
Triple Filtered Carbonated Water, Erythritol, Carmel Color, Tartaric Acid, Stevia (Leaf), Fumaric Acid, 33 mg Caffeine (from coffee), Natural Flavors, Citric Acid, Citrus Oils, Nutmeg Oil, Clove Leaf Oil, Botanical Oil, Cassia Oil, and Cherry Essence. (All oils listed in ingredients are essential oils)

0 calories, 20 mg sodium, 15 g total carbs (15 g Erythritol)

Zevia Black Cherry

Black Cherry tastes just as it says, like a black cherry soda. The cherry flavor is strong. So if you don't like cherry very much, opt for Dr. Zevia or a different flavor entirely. The "diet" flavor is hidden well with the Zevia Black Cherry.

Zevia Black Cherry Ingredients:
Triple Filtered Carbonated Water, Erythritol, Citric Acid, Stevia (Leaf), Natural Flavors, Cherry Essence, Clove Leaf Oil, and Cassia Oil. (All oils listed in ingredients are essential oils). No caffeine.

0 calories, 20 mg sodium, 13 g total carbs (13 g Erythritol)

Zevia Orange

I am not usually a big Orange soda fan, but if you are, you will like the Zevia Orange. Tastes very similar to a calorie-free version of Crush, or similar, but without all the artificial junk.

Zevia Orange Ingredients::
Triple Filtered Carbonated Water, Erythritol, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors (Orange Oil), Stevia (Leaf), and Annatto. No caffeine.

0 calories, 0 mg sodium, 11 g total carbs (11 g Erythritol)

Zevia Cola

The flavor of Zevia Cola was OK and I would drink it again… but only if I was out of Dr. Zevia! It is nothing to write home about, but I still like that it has a cola flavor and all natural. This has the most caffeine of the entire Zevia product line.

Zevia Cola Ingredients:
Triple Filtered Carbonated Water, Erythritol, Carmel Color, Tartaric Acid, Stevia (Leaf), Fumaric Acid, 45 mg Caffeine (from coffee), Natural Flavors, Citrus Oils, Cola Nut Extract, and Citric Acid.

0 calories, 5 mg sodium, 12 g total carbs (12 g Erythritol)

Zevia Ginger Root Beer

This is no A&W, but if you love root beer and want a healthier substitute give this a try. I would describe it as having more of a root beer bite rather than a smooth flavor. The sharp bite comes from the anise seed oil extract. If you like the flavor of anise, you will like this.

Zevia Ginger Root Beer Ingredients:
Triple Filtered Carbonated Water, Erythritol, GMO Free Carmel Color, Stevia (Leaf), Citric Acid, Natural Flavors, Citrus Peel Oil, Wintergreen Oil, Cassia Oil, Anise Seed Oil Extract, and Ginger Root Extract.

0 calories, 15 mg sodium, 10 g total carbs (10 g Erythritol)

Zevia Ginger Ale

I love ginger ale so it is hard for me to judge fairly. Zevia's version tastes like a sharp ginger ale, lacking a smooth flavor that I typically enjoy. Not terrible, not great.

Zevia Ginger Ale Ingredients:
Triple Filtered Carbonated Water, Erythritol, Citric Acid, Carmel Color, Stevia (Leaf) and Natural Flavors (Citrus Peel Extracts, Ginger Root Extract).

0 calories, 20 mg sodium, 13 g total carbs (13 g Erythritol)

Zevia Lemon Lime Twist

To be fair, I have never enjoyed any form of diet lemon lime soda. So, I bet you can guess my opinion of this one. But once again, if you like lemon lime drinks, give it a try!

Zevia Lemon Lime Twist Ingredients:
Triple Filtered Carbonated Water, Erythritol, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors (Lemon Oil and Lim Oil), and Stevia (Leaf).

0 calories, 0 mg sodium, 11 g total carbs (11 g Erythritol)

Overall, if you are health conscious and searching for a beverage that gives you the flavor of a carbonated soda without compromising your nutrition, give Zevia a try. I would love to know what you think about it. Dr. Zevia is my personal favorite from this lineup of 7 flavors!

Stevia rebaudiana flowers
(Source: Ethel Aardvark)

If you browse through the comments section on that piece, then it's obvious that there was discussion regarding whether these new sweeteners (Truvia and PureVia) are considered natural. I titled the news item using the phrase "artificial" which seemed to set some feedback in motion arguing against that notion.

Here are some excerpts from BevReview readers:

Stevia is a better sweetener than any other because its just an herb (although there may be something in the processing of it – turning it from brown to white – that will make it just as bad as the fake sugars).

- Charlene

I think the title of this piece may be a little misleading since as far as I am aware these new stevia based sweeteners being used by Coke and Pepsi (Truvia and PureVia) are natural sweeteners as opposed to being new artificial sweeteners. The 'natural' factor is their whole differentiating proposition and why there seems to be such a buzz around them at present.

- Sally

Why are you describing Reb A as artificial? It is a naturally extracted molecule (glycoside) from the Stevia plant in the same way that gingko extract is extracted from the gingko leaf. This is the whole point. The color change is because the extract is a clear liquid (like water) and then powderized naturally.

There will detailed coverage available within in the next few weeks of the extraction process and its social benefits. Coke and Pepsi wouldn't have invested major resources in another artificial sweetener just because it started life as a plant. Sucralose starts life as pharma grade sugar (which is itself and extract) . The difference is that Reb A remains clean, natural and safe.

- Angusf27

Now, I don't claim to be the expert on such things, so I figured I'd open this up to folks who may know more than me. Reading what I've linked to, what other folks are saying, and what you've read, would you consider these new sweeteners to be 'natural' or 'artificial'? Would you place it along side sugar, or would you group it with aspertame, Ace-K, and sucralose?

Is this another situation like the launch of the reformulated 7Up back in 2006 when they claimed that the drink was "Now 100% Natural" even though it used high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)? 7Up's parent company was sued over the claim and eventually changed the branding to "100% natural flavors".

Or are these Reb-A-based sweeteners actually the real deal? Maybe it just boils down to labeling and semantics regarding what is considered 'natural' or not.

I'd like to hear more from you, the BevReview readership. What are your thoughts on these new sweeteners? How about their potential for use in beverages, like Sprite Green and SoBe LifeWater? Are you looking forward to their introduction or is it a "ho hum" type of situation?

Comments are open. Share away!

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• Sprite Green
• Zevia
• SANS Natural Diet Soda

Original Story: The latest diet beverage war has begun with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration granting approval for use of a new artificial sweetener in soft drinks. Based on the stevia plant found in South America, rebaudioside A (also known as Reb-A) is the key ingredient in two new sweeteners being used by both Coke and Pepsi in new products.

First off is Sprite Green from Coke, which uses the Truvia brand of sweetener, the consumer name for Rebiana, which is the Reb-A version offered by a joint project between The Coca-Cola Company and Cargill.

Rolling out first in New York and Chicago, Sprite Green is a reduced calorie version of Sprite, the most recent line extension since the rebranding of Diet Sprite to Sprite Zero and the trio of short-term Remix flavored drinks (Sprite Remix Tropical, Sprite Remix Berryclear, Sprite Remix Aruba Jam). Per Coke's press release about the new drink, Sprite Green "has 50 calories per 8.5-ounce serving and 5% lemon juice. Sprite Green was created to appeal to active young adults and will be launched in two U.S. cities this month in distinctive 8.5-ounce aluminum bottles. Initial availability will be limited to teen and young adult-oriented locations and events with a broader rollout planned for early 2009. Sprite Green complements the Sprite brand’s leading lemon-lime and zero-calorie lemon-lime sparkling beverages."

On the flipside, Pepsi is rolling out Zero Calorie versions of SoBe LifeWater in 3 flavors: Yumberry Pomegranate, Fuji Apple Pear, and Black and Blue Berry. These drinks use the PureVia brand of the Reb-A sweetener, created by Whole Earth Sweetener Company and used by Pepsi.

Pepsi's press release notes that "in addition to a full day's supply of Vitamin C, each bottle of zero-calorie SoBe Lifewater also provides 20% of the recommended daily value of Vitamin E as well as 10% of the recommended daily value of Vitamins B6, B12, Niacin (B3) and Pantothenic Acid (B5.) Each also will be infused with a unique blend of herbal ingredients." The SoBe products are going to be available nationally.

Like the abundance of Splenda-based products that came out years ago, the introduction of Stevia-based sweeteners to the marketplace is bound to prompt a new wave of drinks or at the very least, reforumalations of existing diet beverages. Right now, the hot combo seems to be Aspartame/Acesulfame potassium (as used in Coca-Cola Zero). Sucralose as a stand-alone sweetener got some press when Coke rolled out Diet Coke Sweetened with Splenda back in 2005, but other than its comob use as Sucralose/Ace-K in Diet Rite, hasn't really been the "silver bullet" sweetener like Aspartame/Ace-K has been.

One wonders what's going to happen with these Stevia-based drinks… or beyond that, if the public is going to be utterly confused by the zillion names associated with this new product (i.e. Stevia, rebaudioside A, Reb-A, Truvia, PureVia, etc.)

It's going to be an interesting year in beverages!