Prebiotic Soda Face-Off: We Blind-Tasted Cola-Flavored Poppi and Olipop to See if They Could Replace Coca-Cola or Pepsi

Probiotic sodas, like Culture Pop, contain live cultures that are supposed to help keep your gut healthy (we didn’t include any of these in our testing because they are not available in cola flavor). Prebiotic sodas contain ingredients that feed the good bacteria in the gut and help stimulate the growth of probiotics. These soda alternatives are claimed to offer the sweet flavor of soda without the negative health effects of added sugars, like obesity and an increased risk for heart disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes.

They are significantly lower in calories and contain less sugar than regular soda, thanks to the use of alternative sweeteners (more on this later). Even better, they claim to be good for gut health, too. While pre- and probiotics could help keep your gut microbiome healthy, prebiotic sodas shouldn’t be your only source for these gut-healthy ingredients.

Today, if you take a peek inside my fridge, you’ll find several flavors of my favorite brand—Olipop. Before this taste test, it was the only cola alternative I genuinely enjoyed drinking. To find out if any of the brands that offer cola-flavored prebiotic sodas could actually fool anyone into thinking they were drinking regular soda, we put together a panel of seven taste testers to blind-taste the four available brands against five colas, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero. The stakes were high. Here’s what they thought.