NEW YORK (AP) — Ask five strangers to taste five new diet sodas and you might get one opinion: Try again.

As soda consumption has declined over the past several years amid worries about the nation's obesity rates, The Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. have worked to come up with sodas that have fewer calories but still taste good.

So The Associated Press asked a panel that included a food blogger and Bruce Bozzi, who heads marketing at The Palm steakhouses, to come to its New York City headquarters to gauge how the latest generation of low-calorie sodas stack up to the originals. The verdict? Soft drink makers have a long way to go.

On tap for the taste test were:

— Pepsi Next, which has about half the calories of regular Pepsi at 60 calories per can.

—10-calorie versions of Dr Pepper's Sunkist and A&W Root Beer, which are supposed to have a fuller taste than their zero-calorie, diet counterparts.

— Coca-Cola's Sprite Select and Fanta Select, which are made with natural sweeteners and have 70 calories a can, versus about 140 and 160 for regular Sprite and Fanta, respectively.

Only Pepsi Next, which hit shelves in March, is available nationally. The rest are still being tested in select markets.

When it comes to mimicking the original, Pepsi Next generally fared the best. As with most regular sodas, Pepsi is sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, which has the same nutritional value as sugar. Pepsi Next reduces the amount of high-fructose corn syrup — and calories — and replaces it with artificial sweeteners like aspartame that are used in traditional diet sodas.

But the similarities between Pepsi Next and Pepsi were a problem for some testers. Stephanie Klose, a food blogger for Serious Eats, said both tasted fake and overly sweet.

"Pepsi is an overly sweet soda, so the whole brand colors the taste," said North Landesman, a middle school history teacher and self-proclaimed soda aficionado. "It's so sweet that the first sip is always really good. But the more you drink, the worse it tastes."

In a statement, Pepsi noted it has tested Next extensively and that its research shows that the drink "meets or exceeds taste expectations."

Another opinion was unanimous among the taste testers: nobody liked Fanta — either the regular or the mid-calorie version made with stevia, a zero-calorie sweetener that comes from a South American plant. Will Carlough, who is loyal to regular Coke, grimaced after taking sips of each.

"I can't tell the difference," said Carlough, a 34-year old programmer at social media site Meetup.com.

Sprite Select, which is also made with stevia, also was deemed too fake. The "weird" aftertaste gave it away immediately from the original Sprite, which the panel loved.

"It tasted like a dissolving packet of aspartame," Klose, the food blogger, said. Continued...