The “cane” line of Hansen’s sodas is made with cane sugar. Hansen’s have other lines made with HFCS, and/or artificial sweetners, so you have to pay attention.
Mountain Dew Throwback is still available too (for varying definitions of cola).
Maybe things have changed since then, but several years ago, I was unable to find Mexican Coke in the US that was sweetened solely with sugar. The labels listed sugar and/or corn syrup as ingredients. I concluded that it may have been cane sugar only in years gone by, but nowadays it’s the same as the US stuff.
The local Fresh Market had 'em with sugar (in glass bottles) when I checked last week, though I don’t know if that was just the run-up to Passover.
Down here (TX) the glass bottle Dr Pepper is made with cane sugar, no HFCS.
How many years ago is “several?” Here in Washington State, Coke with actual sugar has been commonly available for about the last 10 or so years. Costco probably stocks it because all the other grocery stores around here were (Costco is headquartered in Kirkland, WA.)
When I was in High School, however, around 1996, my mom wanted to get some Coke bottles for an antique vending machine she bought and she had to special-order them from Albertson’s. (At that time, you could only get the cans, or the big plastic bottles, not the small glass bottles which is the only thing the machine would dispense.) Our local Albertson’s carried the Mexican glass bottles from then on, which I thought was pretty cool.
So to wildly exaggerate, let’s say my mom is personally responsible for re-introducing Mexican Coke into Washington State, and from there to everywhere Costco exists. You’re welcome. 
[QUOTE=Blakeyrat;16139319…]
How many years ago is “several?”…
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+/-5 years ago, in TX and OK. Happy to hear that the cane sugar-only stuff is still made and exported.
Don’t tell my Rabbi, but what’s up with the ban on HFCS on Passover? Corn is chametz?
No, not chametz. Corn is kitniyot.
I have no studies to offer but as someone who has made their own cola I can say there is a slight change in mouth feel if you use cane sugar.
It is not as dramatic as most people expect and the main difference is if they use “cane sugar” not “table sugar”.
Most people know cane sugar as the “sugar in the raw” in the brown packets at the diner and it is that small amount of molasses that most likely would change the flavor.. I think, seeing as these are secrets, that Passover coke tends to use more refined beet/cane sugar which, in unscientific blind A/B testing none of us could reliably detect.
Typically people seek it out of concern that HCFS is in some way more dangerous than sucrose, this is mostly due to media misinterpretation of an older study by the media and current data suggests that the two are not significantly different.
Cite: http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/88/6/1716S
The original study that caused most of the concern involved HFCS and pure fructose and pure glucose not cane sugar or beet sugar.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15051594?dopt=Abstract&holding=npg
Sucrose, or “table sugar” or “cane sugar” , honey, grape juice and HCFS all are about the same as far as your body goes in relation to being calorie dense foods and their glucose/fructose content.
Note that a large part of the Sucrose that is in a bottle of soda may have been “inverted” or split into glucose and fructose by the time you drink it.
Which is why a lot of soft drinks use mouth feel modifiers like carrageenin to add “body” to the swill. A heavy sugar content makes the liquid thicker and heavier, so even with exactly the same taste ingredients, diet sodas are perceived differently because of the slight viscosity difference.
Not saying it works, but it does improve acceptance of different sweeteners that have effects on the drink other than what sugar does.
San Pellegrino makes fruit-flavored sodas with sugar. They’re pretty good, and I would recommend the two flavors in the picture (grapefruit and blood orange), but not the lemon (“limonata”).
Look for “Pepsi Throwback”.
It’s got a white label with the pepsi logo (as opposed to a blue label with the logo), and can be commonly found almost any place that sells soda.
It’s a promotional thing they did replacing the HFCS with plain white sugar. It caught on so well it’s now available year round at most places.
There have been studies that show that HFCS has a much lower ‘satiety rating” than cane/beet sugar. Altho these are not conclusive, this may be one reason why sodas are so much bigger today, and it may be one cause of the “obesity epidemic’. Thus, even tho HFCS and cane sugar has just about the same calories, there may be a reason to avoid HFCS.
Not to mention that fact that about 40% of soda drinkers can taste the difference and of those that do, most prefer cane sugar.
Good luck. If there’s a single real problem with HFCS, it’s that it’s been added to a vast array of food products, many of which don’t historically have added sugar of any kind. Even if it’s no different from any other sugar and has no inherently eeevil characteristics (including not punching the sugar rush button hard enough), people are eating a larger and increasing amount of it.
That’s just flat-out not right. Cane sugar is just sugar derived from sugarcane, whatever the style. The reason it’s described as cane sugar in the first place is because of the presence of beet sugar from sugarcane.
It’s likely that the bottlers use some combination of cane and beet sugar unless otherwise specified on the label, due to cost reasons. In addition, they probably use pure sucrose, the source of which is only readily distinguished by carbon isotope ratios, due to beet vs. cane differences in carbon fixation by the plants.
They wouldn’t use unrefined sugar in a soft drink- it would throw the taste profile off pretty strongly, while refined sugar wouldn’t.
To me, the only real differences I can tell are a subtle difference in mouthfeel and a subtle difference in the aftertaste- the sugar sweetened sodas are “crisper” for lack of a better term.
True. But I do think that you hit the nail on the head "not punching the sugar rush button hard enough"= perect description.
Did I claim it was unrefined?
I was simplifying, cane sugar is more specific saying it comes from cane, but if you were making cola as asked in the original post and you were buying bulk sugar you will not be buying pure white, super refined table type sugar until 1975 when they defined the bottlers sugar standard. But if you just order “cane sugar” with no more qualifiers from a bulk supplier it is highly likely that it will not be pure white.
Historically they would use what was cheapest and for a brown soda there was no reason to use a refined to pure white table sugar. “Sugar in the RAW” in the brown packets is not “unrefined” it is simply unbleached and in larger crystals and it does retain some of the molasses flavor.
But looking at the spec for bottlers sugar yes, my point is even more correct. The standard was adopted in 1975 and is closer to table sugar, and the closer it is to HCFS as far as the body is concerned. This also explains Passover coke being so close in both mouth feel and flavor to normal coke. This is despite the fact that HFCS has slightly less sugar total because being 55%(typical in bevs) fructose vs 50% means it is perceived to be sweeter.
It doesn’t matter if the sugar is 100% Sucrose today because the PH of the finished product is what causes it to “invert” to fructose and glucose over time.
I will point you back at my last link that shows that was demonstrated that even if it was “pure sucrose” the absorption rate is not very different and by the time it is absorbed it has been broken down into the fructose and glucose.
But if you have any cite to show this is not true I enjoy learning and would be appreciated.
my friends did a taste test with me because they were trying to prove to me that HFCS is no different. We used regular mtn dew with hfcs and the throwback with sugar, we used coke with hfcs and coke with sugar, and they did blind taste testing with me about 10 times per flavor.
I guessed them right 100%.
Now, because I have crap eyesight, was born that way and use my hearing, sense of taste and sense of smell and touch more than vision, this might give me an edge, but HFCS products have a sludgy thick mouthfeel to me, as well as have a vaguely sickeningly oversweet taste. Sugar sodas don’t leave my mouth feeling coated with something and and urge to scrape my tongue, and the taste…crisper? to me
I saw a science program on tv recently where they had people take first a cup with artificial sweetener in it (aspartame, sucralose, whatever, I have to avoid these products because I am allergic to them) swish it in their mouth and then spit it out (no swallowing) and then take a test that basically involved pressing buttons on a computer when certain things popped up on it. They then did the test with a basic sugar solution, and then HFCS.
Everyone fared very poorly on artificial sweeteners. They tested near 100 percent on real sugar, and the majority tested somewhere between on on HFCS. The scientist doing the study said that just tasting actual sugar sent signals to the brain that increased it’s functioning. That the artificial stuff and the hfcs didn’t trigger that response.
Ive been saying for years that fake sweeteners make you stupid, now I’ve got proof. :DYou take charts starting from where HFCS started being used and match it to a graph of weight gain, and they pretty much overlap each other. You can do the same thing with artificial sweeteners. (which I don’t get how anyone thinks they taste good, someone gave me diet coke once without telling me because they thought I was bullshitting about it making me sick. I knew within two sips it was diet because it tasted like a chem lab smells, and then three minutes later they had to call an ambulance because I was having trouble breathing and bleeding from my mouth and throat. I know a number of other people who have similiar reactions, so it’s not just me to reacts badly to this stuff.) HFCS just tastes off and feels nasty in my mouth.
I don’t get how I can go to walmart and have to spend 20 minutes trying to find my preferred brand of deoderant because our walmart carries 87 (I counted) different variations of deoderant between brands, scents and supposed capabilities and methods of delivery (It takes up half an aisle) but I can not get chewing gum of any kind because none are made with just sugar anymore. They ALL have poison in them. the only mints I can have are tic tacs and some altoids.
As far as other sweeteners go, depending on what it’s sweetening (ice tea works universally well with all of these) Agave syrup, honey and stevia are all quite acceptable. stevia does have a faint off taste but it doesn’t bother me, its far more acceptable than the burnt metal/zinc/gasoline/stomach acid taste I get from aspartame, sucralose or acselfame K. Combine about 3 parts stevia with 1 part sugar and I have to really focus to know that it’s not just straight up sugar.
I had a friend addicted to diet mtn dew, she started having horrible health problem. she drank something like a 12 pack a day. I convinced her to drink regular mtn dew for a couple of days and her consumption dropped to four a day. She didn’t want any more than that. (not that THAT is great for her, brominated vegetbale oil and ester of wood rosin? how does anyone even think of putting this shit in food, much less it get approved? but 4 of those versus 12 of the diet made a difference in her health issues, and we eventually got her around to 1 mtn dew a day and drinking sugar sweetened tea the rest of the time. (and for those who start going “drink water”, the water that comes out of our taps is as yellow as if it came from the toliet after someone pee’ing, and often has black flecks in it.) It tastes like petroleum products smell. (I suspect we have shale deposit that intrudes into the local well system and its leaching nasty stuff into our water, the water company can send me all the little cards in the mail saying it’s been tested and is okay all they want not buying it) I find it interesting that when you go in their office they have rented water coolers and all drink bottled water. They also have a side business where they sell home water purifiers. :dubious:
for those that want to preach drink bottled water, I don’t like it. I tastes flat and has an off taste and it is basically what comes out of our tap but run through more purification. The only way to make it taste okay is to make tea out of it. I can’t afford the fancy imported oooh ahhh evian and fiji.
We know the FDC is a joke, they approve whatever lobbyists stick money in their pockets for, I’d love to know which countries have not approved this stuff to be sold in their countries. (unfortunately, I suspect many countries approve stuff because the US FDA approved it and also because the products are made in their country. Still would be interesting to know what countries have denied aspartame etc and HCFS
You do realize that the “throwback” formulas were vastly different even outside of their sugar source?
On the coke front, did you use Passover coke or Mexican coke?
Cite: Warning PDF http://goranlab.com/pdf/Ventura%20Obesity%202010-sugary%20beverages.pdf