7 ms·

This doesn't explain why Coke tastes much, much better in Europe: when I'm traveling I always enjoy Coke. But when I'm back to US I tend to avoid soft drinks en

This doesn't explain why Coke tastes much, much better in Europe: when I'm traveling I always enjoy Coke. But when I'm back to US I tend to avoid soft drinks entirely - they all taste like gasoline here. I lived in Texas for a while and I remember people were always looking for Mexican Coke: some gas stations would stock it. It was significantly more expensive, about $2 per bottle, and indeed, it had the taste of the real thing. Could this dramatic degradation in quality be explained by HFCS alone?

sp332 16y ago
Yup. Not everyone realizes how much flavor the various sweeteners add to a drink, aside from sweetness. That's one of the reasons it's so hard to develop a decent artificial sweetener - there are lots of "sweet" chemicals, but not many have a good flavor.
antidaily 16y ago
sugar versus corn syrup
stcredzero 16y ago
There's also much more awareness about flavors on the continent than in the US. The greater relative persistence of traditional food processing methods in Europe and the greater preponderance of industrialized food production in the US mean that industrial food manufacturers can simply get away with more in the US. The population here has been more conditioned to accept it. I find that much the same is true with sensitivity to micro-pulse within rhythm. A large portion of the North American public hasn't a clue such a thing exists. Heck, a lot of North Americans don't understand how to clap in time on the downbeat! (Unfortunately, you can also find the same cluelessnes in Europe pretty easily as well. The counterpart cluefulness is much easier to find there, though.)
- patio11 16y ago
  There's also much more awareness about flavors on the continent than in the US. Somebody needs to write a book on how food is now essentially a method of values signaling which has some ancillary nutritional effects.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    Maybe it could be the next Michael Pollan book? http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=michael+pollan http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...
- axod 16y ago
  This is also why all cheese in the US tastes to Europeans like plastic. It's extremely surprising that people actually buy cheese in the US, and they seem to have it with everything as well :/ To anyone who has tasted real cheese, it's just bizarre. The other oddity is chocolate. In the US it seems to come universally without any milk or sugar added. Hersheys is bitter. Even the "Cadburys" (made under license) is quite hard to eat, and not anything like real chocolate. And agreed. HFCS tastes pretty gross compared to the same drink with real sugar.
  - Groxx 16y ago
    Most American cheese is pretty nasty. Wisconsin has some good stuff, though you've gotta try a handful of bad ones to find them :) I've worked with a few travelers / Europeans, and while WI may not have a taste for the softer, riper cheeses, what's there is apparently pretty competitive. My sister moved to Illinois, and has been (extremely successfully) converting her neighbors away from whatever those orange blocks are they sell there. She brings back 20+ lbs of cheese whenever she visits. She's also managed to educate a couple in cheese curds: squeaky, not fried.
  - stingraycharles 16y ago
    > To anyone who has tasted real cheese, it's just bizarre. And even in Europe, "real" cheese isn't real anymore. Back in the day, cheese usually had those big holes in it, - they were caused by pro biotic bacteria, while the cheese was aging. However, due to these holes, the transportation of cheese became less efficient, the sizes became unpredictable and therefore the cheeses became harder to stack. So, nowadays, most big producers of cheese perform a heating process to kill all bacteria, getting rid of one of the few things that were actually healthy of cheese. http://www.food-info.net/uk/dairy/cheese-production.htm http://www.food-info.net/uk/dairy/cheese-production.htm
    - Tuna-Fish 16y ago
      In the UK, perhaps. When I go to the cheese counter here (in Finland), nearly all cheeses have the holes in them.
    - 16y ago
- defdac 16y ago
  "Heck, a lot of North Americans don't understand how to clap in time on the downbeat! (Unfortunately, you can also find the same cluelessnes in Europe pretty easily as well." This should be written more about. I always find it annoying people clap on the downbeat here in Sweden, or even more annoying - on every single beat like it's some sort of march. Interesting subject!
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    In some music, you clap on the downbeat. In some music, you clap on the upbeat. In some music, people clap on both the upbeat and downbeat and in different patterns, taking different roles in a division of labor to produce complex accompanying rhythms. A part of the trick is to know how one should clap for a given style of music.
tomjen3 16y ago
Either than or the water - Coke has been running campaigns that it is still their original 100 year old recipe (in Europe) so I highly doubt they have changed it, just to piss of the US ('cept the sugar thing) ,
- spudlyo 16y ago
  I'd certainly love to try the oldest version of the formula that doesn't use 'spent' coca leaves.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
what 16y ago
Stock up on Kosher Coke during Passover, made with real sugar.
- trickjarrett 16y ago
  I stockpiled Heritage DP for this reason expecting them to pull it back off the market. Was up to twenty 12 packs at one point. Eventually ran through them all, thankfully it can still be found in stores.
InclinedPlane 16y ago
Interestingly, Coca-Cola consumption in the US and Canada has gone down in the last decade, I wonder how much of that can be attributed to the use of HFCS. http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/ar/pdf/2009-per-capita-consumption.pdf http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/ar/pdf/2009-pe...
- liamkf 16y ago
  None can be attributed in Canada... it still uses sugar here.
archon 16y ago
I think the HFCS is a big factor. Mountain Dew recently ran a limited-time version of their drink made with normal sugar instead of HFCS. It was, at least to my taste buds, much better than the normal HFCS version. I hate the normal version of Mountain Dew, but that "real sugar" version was amazing.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  It wasn't the best thing I ever had, especially because it was new and unfamiliar, but it was quite enjoyable and very very noticeably different.
- joezydeco 16y ago
  I loved MD Throwback too. It tasted a lot "cleaner" to me, not as syrupy.
joezydeco 16y ago
I wish Coke would bring the European formulation of Orange Fanta to the US. Much lighter, cleaner, tastes great, and isn't this dense syrupy mess that we get with Fanta or Sunkist here. I think euroFanta also has juice in it like Orangina. Probably explains why it's just cheaper to use HFCS here.
pmjordan 16y ago
It's interesting, in southern Africa, Coke tastes different still. The best explanation I can come up with is that they use cane sugar rather than sugar from beet.

sp332 16y ago

Yup. Not everyone realizes how much flavor the various sweeteners add to a drink, aside from sweetness. That's one of the reasons it's so hard to develop a decent artificial sweetener - there are lots of "sweet" chemicals, but not many have a good flavor.

antidaily 16y ago

sugar versus corn syrup

stcredzero 16y ago

There's also much more awareness about flavors on the continent than in the US. The greater relative persistence of traditional food processing methods in Europe and the greater preponderance of industrialized food production in the US mean that industrial food manufacturers can simply get away with more in the US. The population here has been more conditioned to accept it. I find that much the same is true with sensitivity to micro-pulse within rhythm. A large portion of the North American public hasn't a clue such a thing exists. Heck, a lot of North Americans don't understand how to clap in time on the downbeat! (Unfortunately, you can also find the same cluelessnes in Europe pretty easily as well. The counterpart cluefulness is much easier to find there, though.)

patio11 16y ago
There's also much more awareness about flavors on the continent than in the US. Somebody needs to write a book on how food is now essentially a method of values signaling which has some ancillary nutritional effects.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Maybe it could be the next Michael Pollan book? http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=michael+pollan http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...
axod 16y ago
This is also why all cheese in the US tastes to Europeans like plastic. It's extremely surprising that people actually buy cheese in the US, and they seem to have it with everything as well :/ To anyone who has tasted real cheese, it's just bizarre. The other oddity is chocolate. In the US it seems to come universally without any milk or sugar added. Hersheys is bitter. Even the "Cadburys" (made under license) is quite hard to eat, and not anything like real chocolate. And agreed. HFCS tastes pretty gross compared to the same drink with real sugar.
- Groxx 16y ago
  Most American cheese is pretty nasty. Wisconsin has some good stuff, though you've gotta try a handful of bad ones to find them :) I've worked with a few travelers / Europeans, and while WI may not have a taste for the softer, riper cheeses, what's there is apparently pretty competitive. My sister moved to Illinois, and has been (extremely successfully) converting her neighbors away from whatever those orange blocks are they sell there. She brings back 20+ lbs of cheese whenever she visits. She's also managed to educate a couple in cheese curds: squeaky, not fried.
- stingraycharles 16y ago
  > To anyone who has tasted real cheese, it's just bizarre. And even in Europe, "real" cheese isn't real anymore. Back in the day, cheese usually had those big holes in it, - they were caused by pro biotic bacteria, while the cheese was aging. However, due to these holes, the transportation of cheese became less efficient, the sizes became unpredictable and therefore the cheeses became harder to stack. So, nowadays, most big producers of cheese perform a heating process to kill all bacteria, getting rid of one of the few things that were actually healthy of cheese. http://www.food-info.net/uk/dairy/cheese-production.htm http://www.food-info.net/uk/dairy/cheese-production.htm
  - Tuna-Fish 16y ago
    In the UK, perhaps. When I go to the cheese counter here (in Finland), nearly all cheeses have the holes in them.
  - 16y ago
defdac 16y ago
"Heck, a lot of North Americans don't understand how to clap in time on the downbeat! (Unfortunately, you can also find the same cluelessnes in Europe pretty easily as well." This should be written more about. I always find it annoying people clap on the downbeat here in Sweden, or even more annoying - on every single beat like it's some sort of march. Interesting subject!
- stcredzero 16y ago
  In some music, you clap on the downbeat. In some music, you clap on the upbeat. In some music, people clap on both the upbeat and downbeat and in different patterns, taking different roles in a division of labor to produce complex accompanying rhythms. A part of the trick is to know how one should clap for a given style of music.

tomjen3 16y ago

Either than or the water - Coke has been running campaigns that it is still their original 100 year old recipe (in Europe) so I highly doubt they have changed it, just to piss of the US ('cept the sugar thing) ,

spudlyo 16y ago
I'd certainly love to try the oldest version of the formula that doesn't use 'spent' coca leaves.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

what 16y ago

Stock up on Kosher Coke during Passover, made with real sugar.

trickjarrett 16y ago
I stockpiled Heritage DP for this reason expecting them to pull it back off the market. Was up to twenty 12 packs at one point. Eventually ran through them all, thankfully it can still be found in stores.

InclinedPlane 16y ago

Interestingly, Coca-Cola consumption in the US and Canada has gone down in the last decade, I wonder how much of that can be attributed to the use of HFCS. http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/ar/pdf/2009-per-capita-consumption.pdf http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/ourcompany/ar/pdf/2009-pe...

liamkf 16y ago
None can be attributed in Canada... it still uses sugar here.

archon 16y ago

I think the HFCS is a big factor. Mountain Dew recently ran a limited-time version of their drink made with normal sugar instead of HFCS. It was, at least to my taste buds, much better than the normal HFCS version. I hate the normal version of Mountain Dew, but that "real sugar" version was amazing.

sliverstorm 16y ago
It wasn't the best thing I ever had, especially because it was new and unfamiliar, but it was quite enjoyable and very very noticeably different.
joezydeco 16y ago
I loved MD Throwback too. It tasted a lot "cleaner" to me, not as syrupy.

joezydeco 16y ago

I wish Coke would bring the European formulation of Orange Fanta to the US. Much lighter, cleaner, tastes great, and isn't this dense syrupy mess that we get with Fanta or Sunkist here. I think euroFanta also has juice in it like Orangina. Probably explains why it's just cheaper to use HFCS here.

pmjordan 16y ago

It's interesting, in southern Africa, Coke tastes different still. The best explanation I can come up with is that they use cane sugar rather than sugar from beet.