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9:55 · 1.2M views · Dec 11, 2024
ACS Reactions investigates why Mexican Coke, supposedly cane sugar sweetened, tested as having glucose and fructose, explaining that sucrose breaks down in acidic soda.
Linked in corn syrup and Coca-Cola threads to show that sugar type barely matters in soda because sucrose inverts into the same sugars.
9 comments from Hacker News
Sucrose is 50% fructose, 50% glucose. HFCS has from 42-55% fructose (there are grades), the rest being glucose (well some 25% of HFCS is water, but simplifying to the nutritive parts) In the body it's literally all the same with minor variations in ratios. Indeed, the revered Mexican coke with cane sugar...the sucrose is broken down to component glucose and fructose in the acidic environment [1], exactly as happens with HFCS variants, and it would have been the moment it hit your digestive tract anyways. There is zero scientific justification for the weird focus on HFCS. Yes, glucose and grossly excessive amounts of fructose are a serious problem. Especially in forms that rapidly get absorbed and go off like a glucose bomb -- our bodies are not adapted to the extremely rapid intake of glucose forms of food we eat now, including ultra-processed foods fill with refined carbs. The #1 source of glucose in most diets is white breads, rices and so on. White flour is 60-80% starch, while white rice pushes 90% starch. Starch is strings of glucose molecules, and indeed enzymes turn that starch to free glucose almost immediately when eaten. So from a glucose perspective flour is much worse than an equal amount of sugar. And of course nutritive sweeteners in all their forms should be avoided. But table sugar isn't more wholesome or better than HFCS. [1] - Fun video about the sucrose in Mexican coke - this video
I recently watched an interesting video on the subject of corn syrup. Which led me into the fascinating rabbit hole of sugar chemistry. this video If I might summarize. Your body can absorb three types of sugar into the blood, glucose, fructose and galactose. glucose is directly used by cells, the other two have to take a trip through the liver to turn them into glucose. Table sugar is sucrose. a complex sugar. which can be best thought of as a fructose and a glucose linked together. Corn syrup is a mixture of ~ 45% glucose 55% fructose Sucrose is quickly broken apart into glucose and fructose in several environments, high heat will do it, but also acidic environments. like your stomach, or a soda. a soda will be slightly acidic due to the carbon dioxide dissolved in it(carbonic acid). And some formulations(like coke) add additional phosphoric acid. And to spoil the video. Even if you put sucrose into a soda, that is not what you are going to be drinking. I was unable to figure out why it tastes different, are the ratios off? additional trace chemicals in one source?
The fructose difference is marginal between normal and Mexican coke. In the acidic medium of a cola, sucrose breaks down to glucose and fructose, just as it does with HFCS. HFCS has a bit more fructose, but not enough to make a paper about fructose suddenly relevant. As to the taste difference, Mexican cola has double the sodium. But even then, most people cannot taste the difference. They think they can, proclaim they can, and talk up how great Mexican coke is, but when actually put to the test they have basically random odds of being right or not. Fructose is mostly considered benign if consumed in moderation. You can get fatty liver if you consume to excess, but for most people it has no caloric value and is excreted from the body as a non-nutritive sweetener. Good related video- this video
The irony is that a significant proportion of the sugar in "old" Coke in the US was not actually cane sugar, but from sugar beets. But the obsession over types of sugar is largely ephemeral. All sugars are highly processed and refined and equally bad. HFCS's only crime is it's cheapness and ubiquity. Funnily enough, for interesting chemistry reasons, it doesn't matter which type of sugar you put in, it all breaks down into glucose and fructose anyway! this video
I remember watching a video (something like this video , but probably not that exact one) where they did the analysis and determined that Mexican cane-sugar coke contains the exact same proportion of sugars as HFCS coke - and it's because of the chemistry of how the sugars break apart in the presence of acid in the liquid. So in theory an extremely fresh mexican coke might be different, but in practice you're getting the same thing.