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Every ingredient in the drinks people actually buy, in label order, with a verdict.

Most of what’s in a can is a short list that repeats across brands: water, a sweetener, an acid, a color, “natural flavors,” and sometimes caffeine or a preservative. The brand name changes; the chemistry mostly doesn’t. Each breakdown below goes through one product line by line, flags what matters, says plainly what doesn’t, and compares it to the drinks it competes with — so when you switch from Coke to Coke Zero, or Gatorade to Prime, you can see exactly what you’re trading.

Jump to: Sodas · Zero-sugar sodas · Sports and hydration · Energy drinks · Pick by what you’re avoiding

Sodas

The sugar-sweetened originals. On every one of these, the sugar is the story — 39 to 44 grams a can — and the dyes and caramel color are the supporting cast.

Sugar-sweetened sodas

  • Coca-Cola — six ingredients, 39 g of sugar, and the new cane-sugar version that changes the taste but not the numbers
  • Dr Pepper — the 23-flavor cola with the same sugar, caramel color, and phosphoric acid as Coke
  • Sprite — clear, so no caramel color or dyes; the corn syrup and citric acid are the whole label
  • 7 Up — Sprite’s closest competitor, with a preservative Sprite doesn’t use
  • Fanta Orange — more sugar than Coke, two dyes that carry a warning label in Europe, and zero orange
  • Sunkist — the same dyes as Fanta, plus caffeine most people don’t know is there

Zero-sugar sodas

The same drinks with aspartame, sucralose, or acesulfame potassium in place of sugar. Fewer calories, a different set of questions, and a preservative the sugared versions didn’t need.

Diet and zero-sugar

  • Diet Coke — aspartame alone, more caffeine than regular Coke, and the three ingredients worth a second look
  • Coke Zero Sugar — aspartame plus Ace-K, engineered to taste like the original; how it differs from Diet Coke

Sports and hydration drinks

Sold on electrolytes. Some have them; some have the marketing. The number to read on every one of these is sodium, because that’s what you actually lose in sweat.

Sports and hydration

  • Gatorade — 34 g of sugar that’s doing a job during long exercise and doing nothing at a desk
  • Gatorade Zero — the same electrolytes with sucralose and Ace-K instead of sugar, and dyes on their way out
  • Powerade — electrolytes on the front, corn syrup and Blue 1 on the back
  • Prime Hydration — 700 mg potassium, 10 mg sodium; backwards for sweat, and the sweeteners nobody mentions

Energy drinks

Caffeine and sugar do the work. Taurine, ginseng, and the B vitamins get the credit. The useful comparison is per ounce, because the cans aren’t the same size.

Energy drinks

  • Red Bull — 80 mg caffeine, 27 g sugar, 1,000 mg taurine; the smallest dose of the big three
  • Monster Energy — 24 ingredients, two that matter, and sucralose hiding in the sugared original
  • Celsius — 200 mg caffeine, no sugar, no taurine, and a “thermogenic” claim worth examining

Pick by what you’re avoiding

If you’re choosing a drink by one specific ingredient, this is the short version. Every claim links to the breakdown that explains it.

  • Avoiding sugar: Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Gatorade Zero, and Celsius all have 0 g. Prime has 2 g.
  • Avoiding artificial sweeteners: harder than it sounds. Every zero-sugar drink here uses at least one, and so does Monster‘s sugared original. The sugared sodas and regular Gatorade are the ones without.
  • Avoiding synthetic dyes: the colas (Coke, Dr Pepper) use caramel color instead; Sprite, 7 Up, Prime, and Celsius have no added color at all. Fanta, Sunkist, Powerade, and most Gatorade flavors are dyed.
  • Avoiding caffeine: Sprite, 7 Up, Fanta, and all the sports drinks are caffeine-free. Sunkist is the orange soda that isn’t.
  • Avoiding phosphoric acid: it’s in every cola, regular or diet. The clear and fruit sodas use citric acid instead — still acidic, but a different story for bones.

The ingredients behind almost every drink

Explainers that apply across the aisle

  • High fructose corn syrup — the sweetener in nearly every sugared drink, and the corn-syrup-vs-sugar question settled
  • Aspartame — the Diet Coke sweetener and the 2023 WHO classification, in context
  • Sucralose — in most “zero” sports and energy drinks; what the research since 2022 found
  • Acesulfame potassium — the sweetener that’s always paired with another one and rarely on the front of the can
  • Caramel color — why cola is brown, and the 4-MEI warning California almost required
  • Phosphoric acid — the cola acid, and what it does to enamel and bone
  • Sodium benzoate — the preservative in diet sodas and fruit drinks, and the benzene chemistry worth knowing
  • Red 40 and synthetic food dyes — what’s in the colored drinks and the 2026–2028 phase-out
  • Taurine — the energy-drink ingredient that isn’t a stimulant and isn’t from bulls

Or see every ingredient we’ve covered in the ingredients index →

Every breakdown on this site follows the same process: the label is photographed, each ingredient is checked against FDA and EFSA documents and the peer-reviewed research, and the sources are linked at the bottom of the post. How we research → · Snacks and candy get the same treatment in the Food section →