Today, we’re putting the two countries and their Mountain Dews head to head, bottle to bottle, DEW to DEW, to see exactly who is dewing it better! It’s American Mountain Dew vs Canadian Mountain Dew: original flavor.
Mountain Dew has been in the United States since the 1940s, when it was originally launched as a mixer for alcohol. In the 1990s, it was reformulated to include high fructose corn syrup, and in 2019 it was reformulated once again to remove brominated vegetable oil. American Mountain Dew has always featured orange juice concentrate as one of its ingredients. (Why did I mention that? You’ll find out soon.)
Mountain Dew was released in Canada in 1964, but, due to Canadian regulations, it was caffeine free until 2012 when it relaunched with the addition of caffeine. Before 2012, you could find Mountain Dew Energy and Dew Fuel, which were both essentially the American formula but advertised as energy drinks to get around the regulations. Around the same time that Pepsi stopped using brominated vegetable oil in the States, it was removed from Mountain Dew in Canada, as well, bringing Canadian Mountain Dew very close to the formula of today’s American Mountain Dew.
Or so I thought.
While working on this article I came across a very interesting discovery: PepsiCo has removed orange juice concentrate from Canadian Mountain Dew! Upon checking with the experts, it seems like this change largely went unnoticed. I could not find any articles covering this change whatsoever nor anyone talking about it on discussion boards. After doing some deeper digging, it appears that this change was made sometime between 2022 and 2023. Huge.
Other than the missing orange juice concentrate, there are not very many surface level differences between American Mountain Dew and Canadian Mountain Dew. Both have 290 calories, both have 77 grams of sugar and 105mg of sodium. Both include Yellow 5. Though, American Mountain Dew has slightly more caffeine (91mg vs 86mg).
But what about the flavor? In the battle of American Mountain Dew vs Canadian Mountain Dew, which tastes better? I snagged a bottle of each to find out.
American Mountain Dew
I don’t typically drink the original Mountain Dew (I tend to stick to other Mountain Dew flavors), so I’m always pleasantly surprised and refreshed by the blast of orange juice flavor that isn’t present in any of their other flavors (except for Code Red and LiveWire). It is sweet but it is oh-so-good. I think it leaves a slightly bitter or artificial taste in my mouth, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Score: 9/10
Canadian Mountain Dew
I’ll be honest, folks, we’re going to have to split some hairs here to determine definitively which is the best Mountain Dew. On the surface, Canadian Mountain Dew tastes very similar to American Mountain Dew. It still hits you with a blast of refreshing citrus flavor. However, I find this one to be much smoother. I also think the aftertaste is slightly sweeter. It makes me wonder if this is a result of not including orange juice concentrate.
Score: 9.5/10
Winner: Canadian Mountain Dew!
The more I drank, the more it became obvious to me that Canadian Mountain Dew holds a slight edge over American Mountain Dew. It was a big surprise, since I always figured that my love for original Mountain Dew was largely due to the orange juice concentrate.
With original flavor out of the way, we still have American and Canadian versions of Voltage, Spark, Major Melon, Baja Blast, Pitch Black, Purple Thunder, Code Red, and Summer Freeze left in this epic head to head showdown. Let us know which you’d like to see go head to head on next? Let us know!
Social Media