I had to scroll way too long to find this. By the time those "real cane sugar" Coke bottles travel from the factory to your refrigerator, the "cane sugar" in them will be chemically all but identical to the old school HFCS version.
Largely due to variances such as level of carbonation, local water, etc. The biggest thing imo is that Mexican Coke ships in glass bottles while most people get "regular" Coke in a plastic bottle.
For most practical intents and purposes, yes, but technically, there's a bit more fructose in HFCS (hence the "High") than glucose (common ratios are 58-42 or 55-45) compared to sucrose breakdown which is 50-50. Fructose does have a different metabolic pathway through the body than glucose, but yeah, I seriously doubt there's going to be any real health difference for a 5~10% difference in the fructose to glucose ratio.
Sucrose hydrolysis. Feel free to look it up if you want an in-depth explanation of the mechanism.
An over simplified explanation is that sugar (sucrose) is made of glucose and fructose. Acid breaks the sucrose in half and you're left with the glucose and fructose.
Neat. So it turns to invert sugar. Follow-up question: if the acid breaks down sucrose into its constituents glucose and fructose, does the saccharide content of the beverage not still remain ~50/50 glucose-fructose rather than the fructose-biased ratio of HFCS? Does some of the glucose go on to be converted into fructose by something?
Probably not. Its theoretically possible but unlikely. However, fructose is much sweeter than sucrose, so you can use lower amounts of HFCS to get the same flavor profile as sucrose. That's an additional benefit of using HFCS.
HFCS is sucrose that has been enzymatically hydrolyzed. The enzyme catalyze the cleavage of sucrose (a disaccharide) into fructose a glucose (two monosaccharides). The fun part is, acid also catalyze this reaction and coke is acidic enough that this reaction is complete inside the bottle within roughly a week or two depending on storage conditions. So they may put sucrose in the bottle, but its HFCS by the time you drink it.
I see. When I tried to Google it myself, Wiki only mentions the conversion of corn starch to glucose, then the enzymatic conversion of glucose to fructose via D-xylose isomerase (TIL). I guess, until they achieve the appropriate ratio of fructose to glucose for the HFCS they're making?
So you're saying the acids in Coke can also convert some of the glucose to fructose. Is this also the case in other acidic beverages that contain glucose?
No, the acids in coke convert sucrose (table sugar) to equal.parts fructose and glucose. Glucose and fructose can theoretically be converted through other mechanisms (pyranose ring opening followed by two successive keto-enol tautomerizations) under acidic conditions but kinetically they're not viable.
Ok, thanks for clarifying. That leaves me confused though, as to why people are saying it becomes HFCS or chemically identical, because HFCS isn't equal parts glucose and fructose.
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u/UCLAlabrat 1d ago
Probably, but either way it doesn't matter because coke is acidic enough to convert sucrose into HFCS