03.29.08
Zest-o Diet Dalandan Soda
Oh yes, they make Dalandan soda in diet too. Keen, and also the other reason I picked up these Zest-o sodas. Weirdly, the Japanese (or JSFR country honoree) don’t seem to either make a lot of diet sodas or they don’t export a lot of diet sodas. The dalandan sodas, I believe, are the first sodas with a diet counterpart that I’ve seen and this one may very well be the first diet soda period. I can’t imagine the Japanese not having a diet soda counterpart so maybe the specialty anime stores see no reason to stock the non sugary versions.
So. Diet dalandan. Does dalandan fruit taste swampy to begin with or is Zest-o using mire water for their liquid element? Because the diet soda has the same swamp bouquet and that light swamp flavor as the sugared version. Speaking of sugar, the diet lists both aspartame and acesulfame-k which usually walks hand in hand with Splenda. I suppose that since most of the Japaneseish sugar sodas have multiple sugars it would stand to reason that diet would have several sugar substitutes. Odd but logical.
It would also stand to reason that the multiple sugar substitutes might flavor the soda in a non sugary additive way and…yeah. Weirdly the diet was much fizzier than the sugar soda.
The dalandan flavor is still the same kinda tart fruity citrus flavor but that swampiness has got to go in order to gain anything close to tasty peaness. One of my Pigs said that the initial taste is pretty nice, and it is, but then the swampy and the sugar substitute kick in. Another Pig told me that Zest-o dalandan is “Reminiscent of swamp water that had citrus fruit rotting in it but kinda in a good way. Kinda.” I’ll give the diet dalandan a half pea for providing a diet flavor and half a pea point for the Zest-o (hee) but I’m going to dock a half pea for the swamp and a half pea for the substitue sugar taste. If the swamp would take a hike and the sugar substitute wasn’t so prevelant, this would be a tasty 3.5 pea soda. As is, I’m afraid this is a 2 pea drink with an extra half pea of fun for a total
Rating of 2.5 wasabi peas out of a possible 5 wasabi peas.
