Meijer Diet Root Beer

so i never really knew what malic acid was but this time i wondered so i looked it up in the giant brain. there i found out it is added to food to make it tart, mostly in extreme candies. often instead of the less sour citric acid, which i also kind of wondered why it was in root beer. now, i really don’t know why. would these sodas be too sweet otherwise? is root beer supposed to be tart and no one ever told me? that would be rather funny to me.
so yeah, this has malic acid, let’s see how it is.
the packaging is fine. the plaid is similar to the regular root beer but more generic looking at the plaid itself is white and silver, very reminiscent of the classic generic food containers which seem to have disappeared in the past couple of decades. as it IS indeed generic soda, that is not the worst thing.
and this is not the worst store brand diet soda. or even the worst diet soda in general. in fact it is better than some regular root beers. it is not good of course, but it is not terrible. i do get somewhat of a root beer flavor even! more prominent though is a sort of fruity thing in the middle taste which fades away and becomes a lingering diet soda taste that is never good. that that taste is minor is a major thing though for me. i dread diet sodas since they make me feel like i need to grab some pepto, but this one should be ok. thanks Meijer for that. it is also a little rough in the carbonation, it hurts my mouth a bit. i seem to be getting more sensitive to bad carbonation as i get older, weird. i think it is the larger bubbles from some forms of forced carbonation. it makes for a rough swallow. so you could do worse than this but it is not great. if i was a diabetic with 12 cents in my pocket, i might get this sometimes.

Ingredients: carbonated water, caramel color, potassium benzoate (preservative), aspartame, natural and artificial flavor and malic acid