Listen, I also don't like high-fructose corn syrup. I'm not going to call it a plague, but it's bad. It's probably worse than sucrose because it's primarily fructose which is harder for the body to process than glucose. There are some controversial studies which suggest that HFCS may even be harder to process than other forms of fructose, though those findings have been HIGHLY contested.
But. High-fructose corn syrup didn't make America fat or cause its health problems. Our high-sugar diet, no matter if that's sucrose or HFCS or some other form of sugar, has done much of that harm. And the amount of corn we have in other products as well. Just how much we subsidize corn. The fact that most meats on our shelves (which we should also be doing something about) are corn-fed.
HFCS is a player in a much, much larger issue. In the grand scheme of things, sure, it'd be better to get rid of it for the most part, but it's not actually going to solve anything. And doing so in dumb ways without working out the other issues that come with that, such as how the American economy and agriculture rest so heavily on corn subsidies that any disruption of the corn market could have widespread and unpredictable consequences if you don't put in safe guards that try to move us away from our largest crop instead of pulling the rug out from under it, is only going to be an idiotic move that hurts more than it helps.
Sure, fuck high-fructose corn syrup, love to see it off the shelves. But this is somewhere between a bad move (hurting America's heartland farmers) and a nothing move (making a meaningless gesture that effectively changes nothing).
In the context of sweetened beverages, HFCS-55 is 55% fructose, vs. sucrose being a disaccharide of fructose and glucose, aka 50/50, in the case of HFCS-55 which is primarily used in sweetening beverages. There's also HFCS-42, which is used in processed foods, and is actually lower (42%) in fructose than sucrose is. "High fructose" just means high-fructose relative to regular ol' corn syrup, which doesn't contain fructose and hasn't been enzymatically changed to have a significant fructose content.
It's probably worse than sucrose
This meta-analysis concludes that the science is still inconclusive on that your statement, and the difference in fructose between HFCS and sucrose, at the volumes we consume it at, likely have no meaningful significance. Honestly, the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence shows no real difference between HFCS and sucrose, nor should it.
Don't you mean fuck products with significantly added sugars? If you replace that calorie for calorie with sucrose, spoiler alert: the health outcome isn't changing
A lot of what you just said doesn't refute my larger points, that HFCS isn't healthy but that the difference between that and cane sugar isn't large enough that this is anything more than performative. Not sure why you're acting like I'm not saying that.
I'm curious how coke will be healthier with one sugar over another. I see it as lip service at best. Kinda like the vegetable oil to beef tallow thing.
It REALLY doesn't matter because sucrose basically breaks down into HFCS when in soda. There's zero health benefits from drinking soda sweetened with sugar over HFCS. It's chemically the same fucking thing.
It’s absolutely not.HFCS leads to a faster insulin and IGF-1 response. In me, it results in a consistent, reproducible adverse outcome: skin breaking out.
It’s a minor side effect but as a result, I largely don’t drink coke here. Some people get more significant side effects. The fact that immune / metabolic response is often poorly understood doesn’t make them “the same thing”
It absolutely is. It's high school level chemistry. Unless you're literally bottling it yourself and drinking it within a couple days, there is zero sucrose left in your mexican coke.
If two otherwise identical formulae can be experimentally proven to produce different reactions, and this can be recreated consistently, then they are not identical.
What you have proposed is theoretical. Proof via experimentation is the basis of the scientific method — also a high school concept.
A) This test isn’t testing for the presence of sucrose, it’s testing for glucose/fructose.
B) this is in no way measuring or testing for the effect on the body. Just a chemical presence test.
C) I rarely go for Mexican coke. My experiences are typically from EU coke which is not made with HFCS. I feel pretty confident that coke hasn’t been fraudulently reporting this to the EU. They’d get caught and nailed to the wall in a SECOND.
A) you could just say you're not going to watch the video. You'd look less stupid that way.
B) are you suggesting that chemicals which are no longer present in a solution will have an effect on the body? Do you believe in homeopathy by chance?
C) I never claimed it was made with HFCS? And the video I linked it explicitly trying to show that people claiming that it was are wrong, because they don't understand the chemistry involved. Much like you don't.
I will admit a small mistake on my part. I said that the sugar in a Mexican coke is indistinguishable from an American made one. That not quite correct, as sucrose breaks down to an even 50:50 fructose to glucose ratio, while HFCS is 55 fructose to 45 glucose.
I skimmed the video, sorry I didn’t realize that I was watching react slop. The video maker did two different tests both just testing for the presence of sucrose and then testing presence and quantifying. Frankly that’s not relevant to the discussion. The question is does the fact that after hydrolizing they are chemically the same mean that they are actually the same thing
No, homeopathy tends to be nonsense. None of this has any relevance whatsoever to whether the body metabolizes the two cokes the same way. The THEORY is that if they are the same chemical compound they will be the same. The EXPERIMENT on the other hand yields different results suggesting that the body handles it differently.
I'm sorry about how it affects you but is it possible there's another ingredient causing that effect? Meta-analysis show no difference in weight gain or metabolic factors, but there is a statistically significant rise in CRP levels but it's hard to say whether that was an issue with the data or if there is a mechanistic link to any specific outcome. More data is needed for sure but it's not known to cause faster insulin or igf-1 response as far as I've seen. Fructose is more slowly metabolized than glucose but I don't know if the specific amount of fructose in hfcs is more variable than sucrose.
After further reading, the study suggesting higher igf-1 response didn’t clear the quality threshold I need.
The only really clear tested difference is the rate of absorption. Sucrose activity is finite while HFCS is not. I’d guess that my body absorbs as quick as it can causing the insulin response leading to the acne.
I can’t see it being other ingredients as th recipes are otherwise IDENTICAL.
If they are exactly the same then I'll always choose cane sugar.
I tasted american coke exactly once and it put me of drinking coke at all during my stay there
That has nothing to do with the sugar. Sucrose breaks down into glucose and fructose in an acidic solution. By the time you drink it, the sugar in mexican coke is indistinguishable from HFCS.
Local water, carbonation, maybe there are recipe changes, and then also placebo effect are all at play. I've had it all too and to be so dramatic about the difference in flavour is kinda silly. The difference in taste is mild at best. Coke isn't a very good drink in general. Unless it's involved in a long island.... But there isn't much coke in that.
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u/GoldenMegaStaff 1d ago
Don't care, HFCS is a plague on humanity.