I’ve come to believe that there is a huge missed opportunity in the artificial sweetener industry. For the average person already drinking diet soda, they are accustomed to the flavor. However, any efforts to acquire new drinkers is partially sabotaged by the fact that diet sodas are trying to taste sugar-sweetened. For the average non-diet soda drinker, they are used to high fructose corn syrup. By using high fructose corn syrup, the soft drink companies are essentially stuck in a Catch-22.
A non-diet drinker is always going to think diet tastes like diet. Mainly because diet never tastes like regular. No matter what they do in crafting new artificial sweeteners, diet will never taste like regular. And regular drinkers will never switch to diet for the flavor. So unless someone is going to craft an artificial sweetener that tastes like high fructose corn syrup, regular soda drinkers will never switch for the taste.