The Japanese are fairly fanatic about being anti-drug, unless the drugs of choice are alcohol, nicotine, or caffeine. There are a lot of energy drinks that are chock full of caffeine on sale in train platform kiosks and convenience stores. Tired office workers can get a big jolt of caffeine to keep them from falling asleep at their desks while they wait for the boss to finally go home (workers don't leave until the boss does, even when they have no work to do). The notion of removing caffeine just simply doesn't occur to most companies. In fact, it's very hard (thought not impossible) to find decaf coffee, and as far as I know, some Starbucks are the only coffee shops that carries it.
Because of the widespread use of caffeine, and blithe attitude toward consumption of it, I thought I'd never see caffeine-free sodas in Japan. I was quite surprised to see this display of "Coke Zero Free" a few days ago. It's both calorie and caffeine free. I'd wager though that it'll vanish from the market by the end of this year (if not sooner) because I think people really don't care enough about the caffeine. In the mean time, I'll stock up on a few for later in the day consumption.
Incidentally, Suntory has announced that the next freaky Japanese Pepsi flavor is "Pepsi Baobab". It's based on an African fruit and will be released on May 25. Watch this space for a future review. If you click on the link in the first sentence, you can see the bottle design.
3 comments:
I just bought my first can of the no calorie, no caffeine Coca-Cola today. I haven't drunk it yet though. I was really surprised to see it as the caffeine was one of the reasons I gave up sodas.
If only they had brought it out here about 5 years ago they would have made me very happy! Nowadays I mostly drink either water or oolong tea, not sure I want to go back either.
I was actually quite pleased to see this, even more so because it doesn't exist in the US. I have a habit of drinking caffeine late in the day and then being up all night, so I have been trying to drink only caffeine-free sodas in the evening. At home, that means caffeine-free Diet Coke, because there is no caffeine-free Coke Zero.
I recognized it for what it was immediately, though, because they kept the US color scheme. Diet Coke: white. Coke Zero: black. CF Diet Coke: gold. CF Coke Zero: gold!
Loving your blog by the way, I am reading through it (already finished 1000 Things) because I am here for three months, so I have limited time and need to identify which are the GOOD snacks. :)
Hi, Meredith, and thanks so much for taking the time to comment and doing so so kindly!
It's too bad that you're only here for a short time as many snacks are seasonal, but I'm sure you'll find more than enough to keep you busy! Good luck and please do leave your impressions of any snacks that you try as a result of this blog's posts!
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