A Welcome Soda: McDonald's Diet Coke

baby's first rodeo

There are 224 questions in McDonald’s official FAQ, most of which are mind-numbingly basic, a shocking number of them concerned with the availability of in-restaurant WiFi. And then there’s this:

“Why does Coca-Cola taste so good at McDonald’s?”

A loaded question! Which—McDonald’s is of course going to publicly grant the premise that its Coke is exceptionally good. Duh. But that premise goes way beyond official corporate documentation. It’s everywhere. (Like, really, everywhere.) “Here’s why McDonald’s Diet Coke tastes so good” has gained the kind of recycled-internet-churn status of, I don’t know, “Here’s the order of the Star Wars movies.” When the internet eventually dies, I tend to believe there will still be a lonely bot answering and reanswering this question, programmed to believe it has thus captured the spirit of humanity: Why does McDonald’s Diet Coke taste so good? 

And here is where I tell you that I considered myself a truther on this point for a long time.

The first time I remember having this argument was in high school. McDonald’s Diet Coke tastes great in the way that any fountain Diet Coke tastes great, I’d say. McDonald’s Diet Coke tastes extra-great because you’re associating it with the experience of getting a treat from McDonald’s. I’d grant that it was probably better on the margins—that pre-chilling the syrup and using the slightly wider straw really did mean something. But I would not say that any given McDonald’s Diet Coke ended up that much better than any other fountain Diet Coke. There were simply too many other confounding variables: There’s a lot that makes this a great Diet Coke! They always give you a lot of ice, and you’re pairing it with hot, salty food that perfectly compliments a soda. That makes you think you’re drinking something with the power to transcend the normal standards of the beverage. But you’re not. My high-school contrarianism and stubbornness played a contributing role here, I’m sure. But I also felt I was onto something. A McDonald’s Diet Coke was wonderful. Guess what? So were a lot of other fountain Diet Cokes that I was lucky enough to drink!

Which held just fine until, eventually, I had to begrudgingly give up my stance.

A few years ago, I moved to an apartment right around the corner from a McDonald’s. I’ve bought relatively few meals in my time here. (Almost none of them in daylight and / or sober.) But I’ve gotten many, many, many Diet Cokes, at all hours of the day, in all manner of situations. There’s not much that can serve as either salve or celebration or simple pick-me-up for $1.39. But there’s a McDonald’s Diet Coke. My block also has a deli, plus a grocery store, and there are lots of decent or better options for a soda nearby. Still: I kept turning to the McDonald’s Diet Coke. And at a certain point, after drinking enough of them, with and without food, in times of joy and times of distress, in the hottest points of summer and dreariest months of winter, I realized I had changed my mind: It is better. It simply is.

I spent most of the last two weeks in Europe, which no one wants to hear about, but I passed an embarrassing portion of the flight home thinking about getting a McDonald’s Diet Coke. (Yes, I understand there are McDonald’s locations in every country I visited. [I checked out a McDonald’s in Italy and another in Slovenia; I wanted to try the pistachio McFlurry in Venice, but, alas, the ice cream machine was broken, which felt oddly touching. The human condition knows no borders…] But that part of Europe is Coke Zero territory, not Diet Coke, and it’s certainly not a place to get a cup the size of my head loaded with ice, a critical part of the experience for me.) I’d tried a handful of fun international sodas while abroad. But I knew what I wanted to symbolize coming home. 

The first thing I drank when I returned to the U.S. was a McDonald’s Diet Coke. And you know what? It was perfect.

Okay! This is The Soda Fountain. I’ve been feeling very nostalgic lately about the internet of decades past: I miss dipping into meandering personal blogs, stumbling onto weird hobbyist communities, that kind of thing. So I finally decided to do something with that feeling by starting a project that hit those same notes for me—small-scale, kinda weird, deliberately not productive or professionalized. Welcome to my soda newsletter. I’m going to define that pretty broadly—think more ruminating on various soda drinking experiences, less soda reviews, but I’ll probably have some of both. (Plus other stuff? There are no rules here!) It’s free, with something new roughly every week. If you like my writing about other subjects—like baseball—you might like this. If you have no idea who I am, but you like soda, you might like this, too. And if you have thoughts, ideas, recommendations, etc., please share!  

Have a good weekend. (Maybe with a McDonald’s Diet Coke, even.)