Aspartame-filled Diet Pepsi soon won't be available in stores, just on the internet

(Image credit: Facebook.com/Pepsi)

last updated 10 July 2015

Soon the Diet Pepsi you purchase at the grocery store will be aspartame free. But you'll still be able to buy the old formula online.

On Thursday, Pepsi Co. Chief Executive Indra Nooyi said the company will sell the aspartame-filled version on the internet so fans can still get their fix. U.S. diet soda consumption fell 5.9 percent last year, Beverage Digest reports, as more and more Americans shun drinks with aspartame for health reasons. That's part of the reason why Pepsi kicked aspartame to the curb, replacing it with a different zero-calorie sweetener, sucralose. It's a "very, very good product," Nooyi said, and will hit shelves by late August.

Although soda is very expensive to ship due to its weight, Pepsi and Coca-Cola both recently decided to give the online market a try, and have been quietly peddling low-volume products that don't have huge followings, The Wall Street Journal reports.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.