HFCS-Free Kosher Pepsi Now Available For Passover

Passover starts next week, which means that fans of non-HFCS colas can stock up on 2-liters of soda that eschew any sort of corn-based ingredients in favor of sugar. But while we’ve written about kosher Coke in year’s past this is the first year we’ve noticed that Pepsi is offering a Passover-ready drink.

Just like kosher Coca-Cola, the only real way to tell if the Pepsi bottle is what you’re looking for is to play “spot the different colored caps.” Coke’s kosher variety is bottled with yellow caps (as opposed to the drink’s usual red) while Pepsi replaces the blue caps on its HFCS variety with white caps for the kosher kind.

I found this bottle at my local grocery store in Brooklyn, but I wasn’t able to locate any Pepsi Throwback in order to see how similar the ingredients are on the two HFCS-free products. So I did the next best thing and actually asked a Pepsi rep if they are the same beverage in different bottles.

“Pepsi Throwback and Kosher for Passover Pepsi are not the same product,” the Pepsi peeps told me in an e-mail. “For one, the Throwback product is not automatically kosher just because it uses real sugar — it would have to be produced in a bottling facility that goes through kosher certification. Second, the two products have a different flavor system — the concentrate is not the same for the two products. Consumers should check the cans or bottles in their area to see if they are certified kosher.”

Anyway, if you’re A) looking for kosher cola, or B) looking to stock up on Coke or Pepsi that doesn’t contain HFCS, you might want to get to the store before supplies run out.

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