# Is Mexican Coke non-fattening **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 5, 2017, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378 "2017-01-05T10:43:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MonkeyMensch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@MonkeyMensch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MonkeyMensch)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/21 "2017-01-05T19:07:58Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > It is a common misconception that the “high fructose” in HFCS means that is high in fructose compared to regular sugar. It actually means that it is high in fructose compared to _regular_ corn syrup which is very low in fructose (being mostly glucose). > > It might be argued that sucrose, where each molecule is a glucose bonded to a fructose, is metabolically different from a 50/50 mixture of the two, but sucrose is quickly decomposed into the two early in digestion, making a biological difference unlikely. Oh, I know that stuff, and hence my post was making light of folks who hear the word “high” and think horrible thoughts. I imagine I’m with you all the way on this. The problem of sugar is higher intake of all types, but HFCS has seemed to been singled out as evil, and that’s just silly. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/22 "2017-01-05T22:35:53Z")
This question has a factual answer. Moved to General Questions. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/23 "2017-01-05T23:03:51Z")
While we’re at it, honey is even more like HFCS. Both are approximately equal parts fructose and glucose, dissolved in just enough water to make them liquid. The only difference is that honey has a few trace impurities that give it flavor. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/24 "2017-01-05T23:16:16Z")
More of those Mexicans coming across the border to harm our US citizens. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2017, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/25 "2017-01-05T23:31:52Z")
To sell food to Americans, you need it to be: 1. Full of fat 2. Full of sugar or 3. full of salt Potato chips hit BOTH fat AND salt. IIRC, Fritos was the “American Tortilla chip” - a corn chip fried in oil (and saturated with fat) and then had salt embedded. It was early 60’s or so, and the only American who knew what a “tortilla chip” was were the ones on the Mexican border. For the Conspiracy minded - according to some, the “New Coke” fiasco was a clever plot to switch from sugar to HFCS and not get called on it. When Coke finally conceded, and introduced “Coke Classic”, it was made with HFCS instead of sugar. This is when some claimed that they could taste the difference and started buying Coke in Mexico and bringing it home. A local Wal-Mart now stocks “Mexican Coke”. The loonies have won. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/26 "2017-01-06T04:03:34Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > A local Wal-Mart now stocks “Mexican Coke”. > The loonies have won. I had always assumed that people could tell the difference in taste between cane sugar and HFCS. Is that not correct? I realize that the difference between the two couldn’t make a significant nutritional difference, at least not one that couldn’t be solved by consuming slightly less of the product, but taste? I don’t drink the stuff, but it wasn’t surprising to me that someone who does could taste the difference. ---
**Author:** ![Cadae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@Cadae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cadae)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/27 "2017-01-06T05:53:50Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > There is some evidence the HFCS has a much lower “satiety rating”" than sucrose. Completely anecdotal, but I have definitely noticed it’s easier to keep drinking HFCS sweetened beverages long after I would have felt finished and satisfied with the equivalent cane sugar one. ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/28 "2017-01-06T05:56:28Z")
Maybe every other single person in the world can taste a difference. Is the difference worth setting up a gray market supply line from Mexico? The one time I recall seeing “Mexican Coke” offered for sale, it was $1.25. The vending machines at the time were something on the order of $0.75. Is it worth that much effort and cost to get “the REAL stuff”?. Not to me… ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/29 "2017-01-06T07:07:14Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > More and more often, I’m seeing obesity attributed to the evils of HFCS. “Mexican Coke” isn’t made from corn syrup. Is it less fattening than American Coke? No and in other news, the world is \*round. \*well, you know what I mean… ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/30 "2017-01-06T11:32:47Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > Maybe every other single person in the world can taste a difference. How about the married ones? ---
**Author:** ![GMANCANADA](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gmancanada/32/2837_2.png) [@GMANCANADA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GMANCANADA)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/31 "2017-01-06T11:57:53Z")
A couple comments - I was the Director of Marketing at a big juice company and I can assure you that standard juices are not significantly different from typical soda pops nutritionally. They are basically sugar bombs. Standard store bought are all pasteurized and the boiling process kills most vitamins and nutrition. I’ve rarely let my kids drink juices (or sugared pop) as a matter of course. (Note: If you want juice, buy unpasteurized fresh squeezed juices, they are far more nutritious) I know from our R&D apartment that we never believed the HFSC = bad hype. I was told at the time by our food scientists (12 years ago) that they were identical. They even felt that increase in obesity is due to portion size increasing (for pops and other foods) as well as the ease & low cost to add HFCS as an ingredient as opposed to anything evil chemically about the HFCS itself. My understanding is that science has now borne this out to be the true. I think the OP is reading old information. Regarding the cane based sodas versus HFCS based, there is definitely a taste difference when you compare side by side. The international “flavour house” we bought our flavouring supplies from also supplied some of the big soft drink companies. They put on a two day seminar on flavouring for newbies (like me when I started the job) and they said when the soda industry switched over to HFCS to save money, all their products had to be reformulated to counter the difference in flavour as best they could. That was a great money making period for them. We did side by side comparisons (they recreated some of the colas in-house with cane sugar) and the difference was not huge, but definitely there. I think if you were a true Coke or Pepsi loyalist, you would notice (at least in side by side comparisons) . One way to check for yourself is try a Jones soda. They all are (or were) cane sugar. I’m not a taste expert so its hard to articulate the difference, but I would say the cane sugar products are slightly “smoother” going down. I thought definitely a nicer flavour, but not something I would personally pay extra for. Lastly, not on topic, but one of the topics the flavour house covered was “natural versus artificial” flavours. They thought the whole subject was very funny and said that concept is 100% North American marketing BS. As far as the rest of the world’s regulating bodies go, two chemically identical products are the same, it doesn’t matter if one was made in a lab and one sourced from a farm. That said, they were happy to take our money to help us fool more people into believing there was somehow some health benefit to “100% natural flavours”. Not my proudest marketing moment. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/32 "2017-01-06T14:39:36Z")
Some vitamins might be degraded by cooking, but vitamin C, for instance, is not. And if your juice has pulp in it, it might provide a little fiber. But for the most part, no, there’s not a major difference between juice and pop. And there can be a difference between natural and artificial flavors. Take vanilla, for instance. The primary flavor compound in vanilla beans is vanillin, which we can synthesize exactly in the lab, far more cheaply than we can get it from the beans. But while it’s the primary flavor component, it’s not the only one. There are dozens of other compounds you can taste in a vanilla bean. And maybe we could synthesize most of them, too, but we don’t. So a natural vanilla bean has a more complicated flavor than synthesized vanillin. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/33 "2017-01-06T16:04:40Z")
Does anybody know anything about beet sugar? A quick google indicates that beet sugar is indistinguishable from cane sugar. It seems probable that sodas bottled in eastern European countries probably contain a lot of beet sugar, but I can’t find a cite. The USA, by the way, is one of the world five largest producers of sugar beets, mainly I think in Minnesota and the Dakotas. I’ve tried to eat them as a vegetable in Michigan, but they aren’t very tasty. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/34 "2017-01-06T16:17:52Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > Does anybody know anything about beet sugar? A quick google indicates that beet sugar is indistinguishable from cane sugar. It seems probable that sodas bottled in eastern European countries probably contain a lot of beet sugar, but I can’t find a cite. The USA, by the way, is one of the world five largest producers of sugar beets, mainly I think in Minnesota and the Dakotas. I’ve tried to eat them as a vegetable in Michigan, but they aren’t very tasty. Interesting. Before this post, I never bothered to look up what sugar beets look like. (I was curious because you said you ate them as a vegetable and they weren’t tasty.) They do not look anything like I expected them to. I just assumed they were like regular red beets used for their sugar, but they look more like a stubby, fat turnip. ---
**Author:** ![SCSimmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e495f1/32.png) [@SCSimmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCSimmons)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/35 "2017-01-06T16:31:25Z")
Sodas made with cane sugar are definitely less fattening. They’re more expensive, so you drink less of them. The perfect diet soft drink would be 100% organic cane sugar sweetened, taste better than Original Coca-Cola laced with sweetened ambrosia, and cost $150 for a 12-ounce can. Nobody would get fat drinking those! Well, people with way more money than sense would. But they can pay for personal trainers and liposuction and stuff, so that’s OK. ---
**Author:** ![quimper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7c8e57/32.png) [@quimper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/quimper)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/36 "2017-01-06T16:32:06Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > Maybe every other single person in the world can taste a difference. > > Is the difference worth setting up a gray market supply line from Mexico? > > The one time I recall seeing “Mexican Coke” offered for sale, it was $1.25. The vending machines at the time were something on the order of $0.75. > > Is it worth that much effort and cost to get “the REAL stuff”?. > > Not to me… HFCS and sucrose taste very different to me. Strongly recommend doing a side-by-side taste test of either Pepsi or Coke. If you don’t like the pricing or the supply chain you can always look for Passover Coke (the ones with yellow caps) or Real Sugar Pepsi. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/37 "2017-01-06T18:21:21Z")
> [@naita](#): > > And then there’s evidence that it doesn’t, such as this study: “Energy balance consequences of HFCS-sweetened soft drinks are not different from those of other isoenergetic drinks, eg, a sucrose-drink or milk.” [http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/6/1586.full](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/6/1586.full) > > To my knowledge this study better represents the overall status of our knowledge. If you know of any summaries that support the idea that HFCS has a _much_ lower, or just statistically lower effect on satiety I suggest you post those. Yes, the\* Beverage industry\* paid for a number of such studies.:rolleyes: [http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/meeting\_abstract/20/5/LB95-c](http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/20/5/LB95-c) _Research support provided by the American Beverage Institute and the Corn Refiners Association._ ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/38 "2017-01-06T20:40:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **pulykamell** : > > Interesting. Before this post, I never bothered to look up what sugar beets look like. (I was curious because you said you ate them as a vegetable and they weren’t tasty.) They do not look anything like I expected them to. I just assumed they were like regular red beets used for their sugar, but they look more like a stubby, fat turnip. That’s probably what red beets would look like, too, if the consumers didn’t care what they looked like. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/39 "2017-01-06T21:08:35Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > This question has a factual answer. > > Moved to General Questions. NOOOOOOOO! I double checked that this was not in GQ before I gave a joke first answer :rolleyes: 😉 ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2017, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378/40 "2017-01-06T22:14:03Z")
I am old enough to still prefer Pepsi. When it offered a “real sugar” special edition in a real glass bottle\*, I bought a bunch. Still cannot detect much, if any, taste difference. - - the bottle did vaguely resemble the late-model swirled glass bottle. I want the bottle from the 50’s! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-mexican-coke-non-fattening/776378.md?page=3)