Way back in 1985, in this column about Coca-Cola and cocaine, Cecil mentions agreeing with sugar companies about the superiority of sugar over high-fructose corn syrup in the drink’s formulation. (He has said the same in at least one column, I think.) He adds, “For what it’s worth, you can still get Coke made with sugar in parts of Mexico, Canada, Hawaii, and Europe.”
People also preferred New Coke—before it came out.
I agree with one of the commenters on that page—I’m not a big cola drinker, but I much prefer Dr Pepper purchased around Passover (which uses sugar, at least in markets with significant Jewish populations) to Dr Pepper purchased during the rest of the year.
And since anyone with functioning taste buds can taste the difference, why the Hell isn’t the lobby for so-called “corn sugar” facing criminal sanctions for their barefaced lies?
I have, in the past, bought Coke for my wife during Passover. She has taken one sip of it and spat it out in the sink, without looking closely at the label.
This happened twice, a few years apart.
I thought she was nuts. I emailed Coca Cola to find out what the difference was between kosher and normal Coke. Yep, normal Coke is made with HFCS, and kosher uses cane sugar.
I can barely taste any difference between no-name cola and Coke, and yet my wife cannot even stand to have a glass of kosher Coke.
I think your point pretty well sums up the entire issue. There is, without question, a noticeable difference in the flavor of Coke sweetened with cane sugar vs. HFCS, but which flavor is “better” is just a question of personal taste.
From my studies of the chemistry used by scientists at coke it appears to me that their formula makes the HFCS act like sugar in our bodies. It causes the HFCS to be burned instead of stored. It will make the food sugars/starches eaten with it be absorbed faster by the body and that includes the carbs and fats. So Coke doesn’t appear to make you fat itself but may cause foods eaten with it to build fat. It may also aid some people’s digestion of the nutrients of the food. Changing the sugar in the product would mean different chemistry would need to be implemented. I only have limited access to their chemistry but tried to figure out what they were doing with what I could get. I am not a chemist but had access to databases of reactions. A good chemist would probably be better at analyzing other reactions interactions with the body.
The place where my husband works sells Coca-Cola in glass bottles. I just called him and asked him to read the label to me. The label says the product is made and bottled in Mexico. The list of ingredients states in part, “high-fructose corn syrup or sugar”. FWIW…
I’ve said this before on these boards, but you can’t compare the taste of Mexican Coke with sugar and American Coke with HFCS, and assert that the difference is due to using sugar instead of HFCS. The differences in taste could be due to differences in the water used in bottling. You would need Coke made using the same water, some with sugar and some with HFCS, to do a proper test.
My FWIW: I attempted to do this test with a bottle of Kosher for Passover Coke and a bottle of normal red-cap Coke. I was planning to do a blind test, but even knowing which bottle they came from, I couldn’t taste any difference. They both tasted a little sweeter than I thought I was used to. Maybe it was because I was thinking about the taste, instead of just drinking it. Maybe the red-cap was also made with sugar for some reason.
Temperature makes a big difference to the perceived sweetness of a drink. Another variable here is that different flavors are more detectable to different people than others. The difference that I can taste in Coke sweetened with cane sugar vs. corn syrup is a flavor exactly like rock candy, to me, for lack of a better way to explain how it registers in my personal taste buds (that old-time candy that is just big crystals of sugar on a string). The flavor is unmistakable to me and only present in Coke sweetened with sugar.
I’m in Mexico at the moment and as noted by **Toucanna **some Coke bottles now say “Sugar or HFCS” and each time you open one it might be one or the other. So each Coke is a blind taste test in itself, and I can tell the difference. Some bottles down here still say just “Sugars” which might imply taking the same gamble, but those always seem to have that cane sugar, ‘rock candy’ flavor. I go out of my way to find those if I am buying soft drinks. It’s possible that other factor are involved like water or amount of carbonation, but the flavor that seems to stand out to me as making it different is heavily sugar-influenced.
I’d like to point out that although it seems like the situation you’re describing seems like the perfect double-blind test (no one, including you or the “vendor”, knows really whether the drink you’re drinking is sucrose, HFCS, or maybe both), it’s actually triple-blind: even after concluding the test, no one knows. There’s no verification. The have no independent objective confirmation.
(I’m not actually disputing your claim, so much as pointing out your evidence is lacking from a procedural standpoint. If these types of claims were either verifiable or falsifiable, this discussion would have been over along ago.)
I agree. My personal opinion about a flavor (which is an entirely subjective thing to begin with) can’t really be considered evidence of anything but my personal opinion.
But if I claimed for example that I could easily pass a double blind taste test between orange flavored soda, and straight bourbon - even blindfolded I could tell the difference every time - you would probably find that easy to believe and the double blind testing would be unnecessary. To me the flavors are unmistakably different to the point that it’s not even really a ‘test’.
Looks like the taste test cited in the OP was single blind - no indication that both tasters and testers (or the served and servers, if you prefer) were both completely ignorant of what was being doled out.
Beyond that, would the results be similar between repetitions of the test performed at different times (taking into account changes in the tasters and their taste buds as well as the product)?
Doesn’t appear that the raging question has been settled.
You can’t say that most people prefer sugar to HFCS (taste wise) because most of us have never eat HFCS plain.
I use to work in a bakery before the days of HFCS, but some stuff we sweetened with corn syrup, others we sweeten with sugar, some we added fructose, and other products we flavored with a mixture of the three. The purpose was to get the best flavor and texture.
Their is a difference in flavor between HFCS (which is between 55% and 90% fructose and the rest glucose) and table sugar (which is sucrose), but you can also change the ingredients of your product to handle any flavor or texture differences that you might encounter.
By the way, HFCS-55 (55%) is actually very similar to honey in taste, texture, and composition of generic honey.
We might like the concept that sucrose is more natural or less processed, but that doesn’t mean we really think the more natural product tastes better. If that was the case, broccoli would be outselling Twinkies.
Our sense of taste is affected greatly by our mindset. In the taste test that set off this thread, most people actually preferred the Coca Cola formula that contained the HFCS. And, that’s probably because that’s what they think Coca Cola is suppose to taste like.
And, they like the taste of Coke because it reminds them of summer camp, watching plays in the park, and vacations because that’s what they were drinking when these things happened.
The mind can play amazing tricks. Take a particular scent, and tell people it’s vomit, and they think it smells bad and is disgusting. Tell them it’s fresh grated parmesan cheese, and you’ll get a completely different reaction – although both have similar oder profiles.
A great example of mindset affecting taste was the New Coke vs. the Old Coke debacle. The Coca Cola company was losing taste tests to Pepsi, and reformulated their drink. The new drink, in blind taste tests did better than both the old formula and Pepsi.
When Coca Cola announced the change in formula, the public revolted. Sales of New Coke plummeted and Pepsi became even more popular. Old cases of Coke containing the old formula were snatched up in bulk.
In the end, the Coca Cola company brought back the old formula as “Coca Cola Classic” which immediately not only became more popular than New Coke, but also trounced Pepsi in both the marketplace and in taste tests.
In a six month period, people had completely changed their flavor preference.
I think there may be “tasters” and “nontasters” - people who can perceive the difference and people who cannot. For example, any thread on “bad candy” will mention “candy corn”. There is a segment of the populace that thinks candy corn is the worst thing imaginable on the face of the planet. To me, candy corn tastes like sugar. Creamy smooth sugar. I can’t imagine what could be objectionable, unless one doesn’t like sweets, but that isn’t what these people object to. Sugar vs HFCS might be similar.
Uh, HFCS used in sodas is 55% fructose, 42% glucose. Table sugar (sucrose) is 50% fructose, 50% glucose. How exactly again is HFCS supposed to not act like sugar?
I suspect any taste differences are either texture-based, or from residual components from the source material (sugar cane, sugar beets, vs corn). I don’t think 55% fructose vs 50% fructose will make a significant flavor difference.
Well, sucrose is 50% glucose and 50% fructose, but it’s a disaccharide. That is, each molecule is composed of two sugars: One fructose molecule and one glucose molecule.
HFCF-50 is also 50% glucose and 50% fructose, but these are monosaccarides. That is the fructose and sucrose molecules are not joined.
Fructose is much sweeter tasting than sucrose, and sucrose tastes sweeter than glucose. Fructose and glucose are absorbed directly in the bloodstream while sucrose has to make a trip in the stomach first.
Although HFCS has gotten a bad rap, it’s really not much different in composition and taste than generic honey.
The main problem with HFCS is that we use a whole lot of it in our diets. Back in the 1960s when Coke was still made with pure natural sucrose sugar, the largest serving of Coca Cola you got was a 6 ounce bottle. If you had a party, you had to buy a bunch of 6 ounce bottles.
Now, you can get the 12 ounce can or a 20 ounce bottle as a single serving. And, you can get up to 3 liters in a single bottle. That’s a lot of sugar no matter what form it is in.
Lecture on Fructose metabolism. Interesting, but long.
Here’s the bottom line for me. Modern Pepsi - I can’t stand to drink it, because it’s too cloyingly sweet. Pepsi Throwback? Is the best thing ever.
See, in theory, you could achieve the same sweetness with less HFCS as compared to sugar. (Because of the higher fructose ratio). The problem is that because it’s so damn cheap, companies put more in than is necessary, resulting in a sweeter taste.
–I thought that the only thing that was a “throwback” about Pepsi Throwback was the carton. Is the product itself an old formulation? When did Pepsi change?
