Dr Pepper is now the #2 soda brand in the US:
Huh. I didn't realize that Pepsi had plummeted so badly. I wonder why?
The other thing this chart reminds me of is my longtime puzzlement that consumption of diet sodas is so far behind their sugary cousins. I know they don't taste the same, but they've never seemed that bad to me. Certainly not bad enough to be worth all the extra calories, and that would be even more true if I were a soda addict.¹
Then again, if the "set point" theory of calories is true—namely that we all have a particular number of calories we crave one way or another—then maybe it doesn't matter. If you drink sugary sodas, you're just going to consume less of something else. Maybe I should test that by switching to regular soda and seeing if I gain any weight.
¹In my case, I generally have one soda with lunch and that's it. Aside from that I drink nothing but water.
I have tried drinking diet Coke. I even tried trying to acclimatize myself to it by mixing it with regular Coke, nope, didn't work. When I was young, there were good tasting diet soft drinks that have cyclamate. It was banned, although later I think they determined saccharine was the real danger.