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Old 06-04-2014, 11:01 AM   #4370
troutman
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http://www.businessinsider.com/the-d...-pepsi-2012-12

Pepsi has slightly more sugar, calories, and caffeine. Coke has slightly more sodium.

There are also mysterious differences in the natural flavors included in each drink.

Despite these differences, most people can't tell the difference, according to a study by Samuel McClure and Read Montague: "Coke and Pepsi are special in that, while they have very similar chemical composition, people maintain strong behavioral preferences for one over the other. We initially measured these behavioral preferences objectively, by administering double-blind taste tests. We found that subjects split equally in their preferences for Coke and Pepsi in the absence of brand information."

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...96627304006129

Coca-ColaŽ (CokeŽ) and PepsiŽ are nearly identical in chemical composition, yet humans routinely display strong subjective preferences for one or the other. This simple observation raises the important question of how cultural messages combine with content to shape our perceptions; even to the point of modifying behavioral preferences for a primary reward like a sugared drink. We delivered Coke and Pepsi to human subjects in behavioral taste tests and also in passive experiments carried out during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Two conditions were examined: (1) anonymous delivery of Coke and Pepsi and (2) brand-cued delivery of Coke and Pepsi. For the anonymous task, we report a consistent neural response in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex that correlated with subjects' behavioral preferences for these beverages. In the brand-cued experiment, brand knowledge for one of the drinks had a dramatic influence on expressed behavioral preferences and on the measured brain responses.
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