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I like the conspiracy theory about how the New Coke fiasco was actually deliberate subterfuge for switching the product from sugar to high fructose corn syrup.

I like the conspiracy theory about how the New Coke fiasco was actually deliberate subterfuge for switching the product from sugar to high fructose corn syrup. Corn-syrup coca-cola tastes different than Coca Kola's classic sugar formula, and allegedly people noticed the difference when the Coca-Cola company was doing tests, pre-New Coke. My cousin-in-law only drinks "Mexican Coke" (but Mexicans drinking coca-cola in their country get HFCS-Coke too. Wikipedia says only mexican coca-kola produced for export is made with sugar). Fortunately HFCS is no longer contaminated with mercury [0] [1] (or less contaminated?), thanks to the efforts of a whistleblower [2]. The last problem to deal with is how HFCS preparations might have more calories than listed on the label, on account of residual starch molecules that aren't split into glucose. Residual starch adds calories but don't affect the perceived sweetness. I previously wrote about how the original soda products were herbal beverages: Coca-Cola is made with flavorings from the Coca leaf and the Kola nut, Root beer is made with roots, Dr. Pepper's 21 plant flavors, etc: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17979670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17979670 [0] Mercury in High-Fructose Corn Syrup? - https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20090127/mercury-in-high-fructose-corn-syrup#1 https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20090127/mercury-in-... (2009) [1] https://www.iatp.org/documents/much-high-fructose-corn-syrup-contaminated-mercury-new-study-finds https://www.iatp.org/documents/much-high-fructose-corn-syrup... (2009) [2] FDA WHISTLEBLOWER SPEAKS OUT ABOUT MERCURY IN OUR FOOD - https://www.foodwhistleblower.org/fda-whistleblower-speaks-out-about-mercury-in-our-food/ https://www.foodwhistleblower.org/fda-whistleblower-speaks-o... [edit: added some words to first paragraph re sugar and Coca-Cola company's taste tests pre-new-coke.]

hindsightbias 6y ago
It took almost 30 years, but the look on first-time Mexican Coke drinkers faces was priceless. They all became conspiracy believers that day.
yodon 6y ago
It definitely was not a planned conspiracy that way. Did Coke switch to corn syrup after, yes, but they lost far too much stock market value, lost far too much market share, and far too many key marketers at Coke had their careers destroyed by the fiasco to have made it an even remotely economically sensible approach for anyone involved to have taken simply as a way to shift to corn syrup (which could easily have been done slowly and quietly over a year or two of formula drift without anyone noticing or complaining and certainly without any of these catastrophic brand and career and revenue impacts). Yes, Coke did spend untold millions trying to recover from the debacle, and yes, they were ultimately successful, and yes they did switch to corn syrup during that turn around, but sometimes the answer really is incompetence rather than conspiracy, even if the conspiracy version is more fun to advocate for on the Internet.
T-hawk 6y ago
The HFCS theory is pretty simply debunked. Coca-Cola had already switched to HFCS long before New Coke, starting five years prior, in 1980. Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/new-coke-fiasco/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/new-coke-fiasco/
briandear 6y ago
> Wikipedia says only mexican coca-kola produced for export is made with sugar). Wikipedia is wrong. When I'm in Guadalajara and buy bottles of coke locally, it has sugar. It's an anecdote, but it does disprove Wikipedia. One specific independent bottler in Mexico wanted to use HFCS, but there are other bottlers other than Arca Continental. Coca-Cola FEMSA is the largest bottler in Mexico and they use sugar.
- strbean 6y ago
  I'm curious about the price difference between HFCS and sugar in Mexico. My understanding is that in the US, HFCS prices are artificially low due to corn subsidies while sugar prices are artificially high due to protectionist policies. I wonder if HFCS is any cheaper outside the US.
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    I believe in Europe, they mostly use beet sugar rather than cane or HFCS. It looks like the EU in the recent past heavily regulated their sugar market though Japan has a high usage of HFCS (40% of sugars), and I always assumed that was due to trade agreements with the US giving access to cheap corn since there is so little domestic corn production.
froh 6y ago
The problem with hfcs is much higher obesity and diabetes type 2 risk, not Mercury. https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM
- teslabox 6y ago
  Your link is a video of anti-sugar crusader Robert Lustig's talk at UCSF. It was posted on July 30, 2009, right around the time that the revelations about the contamination of HFCS with mercury started to become known. Mercury exposure is associated with diabetes and metabolic syndrome [2]. While I think Lustig is genuine, he was not aware in 2009 that Fructose is also manufactured/metabolized by the brain [0] [1]. I think the stealth calories in HFCS (as starch), above and beyond the label, is an additional as-yet unappreciated factor in presentations of insulin resistance and obesity. The HFCS problem is multi-faceted. [0] The human brain makes fructose, researchers discover – here’s why that might be a big deal (2017) - https://theconversation.com/the-human-brain-makes-fructose-researchers-discover-heres-why-that-might-be-a-big-deal-73258 https://theconversation.com/the-human-brain-makes-fructose-r... [1] Specific regions of the brain are capable of fructose metabolism (2017) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28034722 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28034722 - "Furthermore, rates of fructose oxidation in these brain regions are 15-150 times that of liver slices, confirming the bioinformatics prediction and in situ hybridization data. This suggests that previously unappreciated regions across the brain can use fructose, in addition to glucose, for energy production." [2] Is mercury exposure causing diabetes, metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance? A systematic review of the literature (2017) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28482296 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28482296

hindsightbias 6y ago

It took almost 30 years, but the look on first-time Mexican Coke drinkers faces was priceless. They all became conspiracy believers that day.

yodon 6y ago

It definitely was not a planned conspiracy that way. Did Coke switch to corn syrup after, yes, but they lost far too much stock market value, lost far too much market share, and far too many key marketers at Coke had their careers destroyed by the fiasco to have made it an even remotely economically sensible approach for anyone involved to have taken simply as a way to shift to corn syrup (which could easily have been done slowly and quietly over a year or two of formula drift without anyone noticing or complaining and certainly without any of these catastrophic brand and career and revenue impacts). Yes, Coke did spend untold millions trying to recover from the debacle, and yes, they were ultimately successful, and yes they did switch to corn syrup during that turn around, but sometimes the answer really is incompetence rather than conspiracy, even if the conspiracy version is more fun to advocate for on the Internet.

T-hawk 6y ago

The HFCS theory is pretty simply debunked. Coca-Cola had already switched to HFCS long before New Coke, starting five years prior, in 1980. Snopes: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/new-coke-fiasco/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/new-coke-fiasco/

briandear 6y ago

> Wikipedia says only mexican coca-kola produced for export is made with sugar). Wikipedia is wrong. When I'm in Guadalajara and buy bottles of coke locally, it has sugar. It's an anecdote, but it does disprove Wikipedia. One specific independent bottler in Mexico wanted to use HFCS, but there are other bottlers other than Arca Continental. Coca-Cola FEMSA is the largest bottler in Mexico and they use sugar.

strbean 6y ago
I'm curious about the price difference between HFCS and sugar in Mexico. My understanding is that in the US, HFCS prices are artificially low due to corn subsidies while sugar prices are artificially high due to protectionist policies. I wonder if HFCS is any cheaper outside the US.
- kalleboo 6y ago
  I believe in Europe, they mostly use beet sugar rather than cane or HFCS. It looks like the EU in the recent past heavily regulated their sugar market though Japan has a high usage of HFCS (40% of sugars), and I always assumed that was due to trade agreements with the US giving access to cheap corn since there is so little domestic corn production.

froh 6y ago

The problem with hfcs is much higher obesity and diabetes type 2 risk, not Mercury. https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM

teslabox 6y ago
Your link is a video of anti-sugar crusader Robert Lustig's talk at UCSF. It was posted on July 30, 2009, right around the time that the revelations about the contamination of HFCS with mercury started to become known. Mercury exposure is associated with diabetes and metabolic syndrome [2]. While I think Lustig is genuine, he was not aware in 2009 that Fructose is also manufactured/metabolized by the brain [0] [1]. I think the stealth calories in HFCS (as starch), above and beyond the label, is an additional as-yet unappreciated factor in presentations of insulin resistance and obesity. The HFCS problem is multi-faceted. [0] The human brain makes fructose, researchers discover – here’s why that might be a big deal (2017) - https://theconversation.com/the-human-brain-makes-fructose-researchers-discover-heres-why-that-might-be-a-big-deal-73258 https://theconversation.com/the-human-brain-makes-fructose-r... [1] Specific regions of the brain are capable of fructose metabolism (2017) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28034722 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28034722 - "Furthermore, rates of fructose oxidation in these brain regions are 15-150 times that of liver slices, confirming the bioinformatics prediction and in situ hybridization data. This suggests that previously unappreciated regions across the brain can use fructose, in addition to glucose, for energy production." [2] Is mercury exposure causing diabetes, metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance? A systematic review of the literature (2017) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28482296 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28482296