In a country where exotic flavors soft drinks are common day business, the Pepsi brand needs something special to keep competition away. In Japan, the Pepsi distributor has released a special fat-blocking Cola.
The healthy product market has bloomed in the past years, convincing more and more soft drink and fast food companies to rethink their market approach. Many have introduces healthy products in the menus or have bought smaller companies to get in the market. In the soft drink market, the likes of Pepsi and Cola are highly scrutinized for the high level of sugar in their recipes.
In Japan, the Pepsi distributor is trying to keep current in a soft-drink market that makes $48 billion a year. Pepsi has released several odd flavored drinks before to address its customers in the Japanese market. Salty watermelon and yogurt are not your common choice for a Pepsi in the U.S., but they were just a few of the flavors Pepsi tried in Japan.
Now the company is taking an aim at the healthy cola market, where its competitor, Kirin, has entered a few months ago. Kirin released in April a beer containing the same fat-blocking fiber as Pepsi’s Special cola. The fiber is called dextrin and is, according to distributor Suntory, great at actually reducing the fat levels in your body. In other words, Pepsi can be healthy?
Based on Japanese guidelines for the healthy cola market, the dextrin based drinks are in fact “food for specific health use”. Dextrin’s fat-blocking properties were researched in 2006 in a study by two experts with the National Institute of Health and Nutrition in Japan. Researchers observed that the rats that were fed dextrin and fat at the same time were not as fat as those who didn’t eat the fiber.
The new Pepsi Special by Japanese Pepsi distributor Suntory will be released this Tuesday. Next month, December 11, Suntory will also release Pepsi White, a cola with a tangerine flavor. Pepsi White has been promoted as a celebration of “the joy of winter” in Japan, where the mandarin oranges are traditional for the New Year festivities.
