Is nothing sacred??????
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Updated: 11:16 PM EDT Coke, Pepsi to Face Off in Carb Battle
By IRA DREYFUSS, AP
CHICAGO (May 4) - Coke and Pepsi, trying to put more fizz into their soda sales, are about to launch new brands that taste like their flagship drinks but contain half the sugar, carbs and calories.
Pepsi Edge and Coke C2
Coke's C2 and Pepsi's Edge are to hit the market nationally this summer. In advance, the companies offered tastes to supermarket executives, restaurant owners and other potential retail distributors at the Food Marketing Institute's annual trade show in Chicago.
The new sodas are targeted at people who don't like the calories in regular colas but are dissatisfied with diet versions.
These midcalorie sodas may work, said Donna Albertson, who co-owns The Good House, a steak and seafood restaurant, with her husband, Buck, in Ragersville, Ohio. Sipping Pepsi Edge from a paper cup, she said the soda tasted as good as regular and did not have the aftertaste of diet.
It could be a hit with people concerned about their weight, especially women, she said: ''It's going to be a gal thing. Gals are always watching their weight.''
The sodas are designed to appeal to ''people who would like less calories but don't wantto compromise on taste,'' Coca-Cola spokesman Mart Martin said in a telephone interview from the company's headquarters in Atlanta.
Martin dismissed the notion that Coca-Cola C2 might become another New Coke, a new taste the company introduced in 1985 as a replacement for its regular soda, only to see it rejected by consumers. Coke returned to its traditional drink less than three months later, marketing it as Classic Coke.
''This is a completely different proposition, an addition to the portfolio, not a replacement,'' Martin said.
Pepsi estimates a potential buyers' pool of more than 60 million. It wants to keep them loyal to sodas so they don't drift into competing beverages such as teas and juices, said David DeCecco, a spokesman at Pepsi's headquarters in Purchase, N.Y.
The new drinks contain the standard high-fructose corn syrup that sweetens regular soda but in smaller amounts. The corn syrup is supplemented with Splenda, a no-calorie, no-carbohydrate sweetener made from sugar.
The result is a soda with fewer calories than regular but more than no-cal. For instance, Pepsi says a 12-ounce can of Edge has 20 grams each of sugar and carbohydrates, and 70 calories, compared with regular's 41 grams each of sugar and carbohydrates, and 150 calories.
AP-NY-05-04-04 2253EDT
McGETTIGAN
The Nutters are a family on a mission. Dad Duncan brought his wife and seven kids from their five-bedroom home in Vermont to a two-bedroom apartment in Queens, New York, to pursue life as an acting family. His own credits include roles in more than a half-dozen commercials, as well as roles in regional, Off- and Off Off-Broadway theatre. 