Pepsi will now make their diet sodas free of aspartame and will hit store shelves within this week, according to a statement from the company on Monday, Associated Press reported.
PepsiCo Senior Vice President Seth Kaufman said in his statement that diet soda drinkers all over the United States expressed their preference for an aspartame-free Diet Pepsi, and the company listened and delivered.
The company's diet soda will no longer have aspartame as the artificial sweetener, but will use sucralose instead. Sucralose is the same sweetener branded as Splenda.
The news follows PepsiCo's announcement last April where it stated that it planned to produce aspartame-free drinks because customers were calling for it and the sales in aspartame-laden sodas had also seen a drop.
Elisa Baker, spokesperson for Pepsi, would also not say if the aspartame-free demand that prompted the change in recipe was more on the concerns of safety or taste, CNN reported.
Still, the company believes aspartame is safe for health. Diet Pepsi in different countries will still retain the traditional recipe.
PepsiCo's aspartame-free drinks — Diet Pepsi, Wild Cherry Diet Pepsi, and Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi — will all be available for sale in stores this week, reports stated.
According to the Associated Press report, people should still check if the drinks they've purchased carry the "aspartame free" label because some stores still have old drinks stocked in their shelves.
This is not the first time PepsiCo applied changes to their drink to improve sales. In 2012, the company also added acesulfame potassium (ace-K), which is also an artificial sweetener that preserves the soda's taste.
The upcoming Diet Pepsi will still have ace-K on top of sucralose.
However, the safety of ace-K was also refuted by Center for Science in the Public Interest director Michael Jacobson, who told USA Today Network last April that consumers should also avoid drinks that have ace-K, since it possibly carries the risk of cancer.
