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Those "Sweet Surprise" ads about how awesome high-fructose corn syrup is, combined with the recent news that Pepsi will be bringing back their "throwback" line of sodas, got us thinking deeply about what sweetens our sodas -- especially Dr. Pepper.

We know that there are pros and cons to the three major sweeteners. Diet soft drinks use aspartame, which rules because, hey, no calories! But it also sucks because, um, brain cancer. High-fructose corn syrup is great because it's been in pretty much every sweet thing we've bought since the '80s, but it's dangerous because it messes with hunger responses and may lead to disease. Cane sugar is awesome because it's significantly less processed, but it's a drag to spend twice as much as you're used to and consume sodas with words like "birch" in their name.

But let's be honest; all we really care about is which tastes better. So we gathered a bottle of regular Dr. Pepper, a bottle of Diet Dr. Pepper and a tiny glass bottle of something called "Dublin Dr. Pepper" -- which uses the original recipe, including cane sugar, and is made only at the first Dr. Pepper bottling plant in Dublin, Texas, and sold at specialty shops in the region -- to determine which one actually tastes right.


Regular Dr. Pepper
The king of the Pepper world tastes a little bit sticky, with the spicy kick that was the hallmark of the young Mr. Pepper, before he obtained his doctorate. Like a lot of sodas made with HFCS, it has the curious effect of filling one's mouth with some serious saliva after even a short swig. Which isn't necessarily bad, just an observation for the sake of science.

Diet Dr. Pepper
Mitch Hedberg once remarked that, if the ads are true and "Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper," it means they effed up somewhere along the way. He'd be pleased, then, to know that they got it right -- Diet Dr. Pepper does taste more like regular Dr. Pepper than it tastes like, say, Santana Brut sparkling wine, but it doesn't so much taste like Dr. Pepper as it smells like it. Opening the bottle, you could convince yourself that it's exactly the same, but once the nasty -- or, at the very least, acquired -- aspartame aftertaste kicks in, there's no way anyone would confuse the two.

Dublin Dr. Pepper
Dr. Pepper is clearly delicious. The other tastes tested confirm that it's totally worth drinking even despite the tragedy of yucky aftertastes and vicious saliva. But the Dublin variety is like those other Dr. Peppers without the side-effects. The other doctors may have earned their degree at online universities, but this one -- which has maybe just a little bit more kick, no weird aftertaste, and is way less sticky -- studied at Johns Hopkins.

Conclusion:
We can comfortably assert that Diet Dr. Pepper does not, in fact, taste more like regular Dr. Pepper than any other diet soda tastes like its HFCS-laden counterpart -- which is to say, it tastes kinda icky. We can also agree that while we may have grown up with the tastes of the adjective-free variety of Dr. Pepper, it probably deserves a descriptor or two before its name -- like "super-sticky" or "oversweet," which would at least offer some truth in advertising. We do have to admit, though, that we may not have even noticed those things about it if it weren't for the deliciousness of the Dublin Dr. Pepper. Which leads us to believe that, while the name Dr. Pepper may suggest a higher degree of education, if you want to keep enjoying the high-fructose corn syrup-y version of the drink, a little bit of ignorance may help you out.