Coca-Cola With Cane Sugar Is a Marketing Ploy, Not a Health Product
Coca-Cola will add sugar-sweetened cola to its lineup, but it won’t be nutritionally different from regular cola — at least not in any significant way. The difference between sugar and corn syrup has been a focus of health advocates for decades, but the U.S. secretary of health and human services is now writing that the burger joint offering sugar-sweetened cola is part of a plan to get America “healthier” again.
Regular Coca-Cola is made with high-fructose corn syrup, which has gotten a (mostly undeserved) bad rap. Orthorexia is now essentially a right-wing political stance, to the point that there’s an entire conservative market that wants to drink the “proper” soda along with the “proper” fries. (These fries would be fried in beef tallow, which is a whole other story. If you want to experience the taste of beef tallow fries without sitting next to a bunch of MAGA fans at Steak n Shake, try making them at home with Claire Lower’s recipe .)
The Difference Between Sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup
If sugar is being added back to Coke, what was there before? High fructose corn syrup, which is virtually identical to sugar (I promise I’ll tell you the differences later) and has become something of a bogeyman for those who like to discuss healthy and unhealthy foods.
Look, we really shouldn’t be consuming too much high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and products that contain it tend to be ultra-processed . It’s easy to draw a correlation between consuming a lot of HFCS and increased health risks. But the same correlation can be drawn with regular table sugar. Some sodas use sugar as a sweetener, while others use HFCS. The main difference is that HFCS is cheaper, so if you’re a corporate giant like Coke or Pepsi, you’ll default to the cheaper option unless you have a specific reason not to.
So here’s the difference. Table sugar is chemically known as sucrose. Each sucrose molecule is made up of two halves: glucose and fructose, chemically bonded together. These are all natural sugars that we encounter in the living world, and in our diet, they’re mostly found in plants. (The word “fructose” literally means “fruit sugar.”)
Corn syrup is made by breaking down the starch in corn, which produces glucose. So regular corn syrup (non-high fructose) is 100% glucose. Glucose doesn’t taste as sweet as fructose, so it’s not a good sweetener for sodas on its own. But you can add an enzyme that converts some of the glucose into fructose. If you do it right, you’ll end up with about half glucose and half fructose, which means it tastes like sugar.
The type of high fructose corn syrup used in soft drinks contains 55% fructose, while table sugar contains 50%. So while it is considered “high fructose” compared to regular corn syrup, which does not contain fructose, it is actually not that high in fructose compared to sugar.
Why There’s Little or No Health Difference Between High Fructose Corn Syrup and Sugar
So, sugar is bad for you. I think we can all agree on that. Here’s the science: sugar isn’t inherently poisonous, but it does contain empty calories, and eating too much of it crowds out foods rich in protein, fiber, vitamins, and other nutrients needed for a healthy diet.
There are many studies on the health effects of so-called “SSCs” – sugar-sweetened beverages. Ironically, most of them are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). The study lumped them together because they are essentially the same thing.
Some people will try to convince you that fructose is bad for you or that fructose is the reason sugar is bad, but as mentioned above, sugar is not actually poison. If you are afraid of fructose, then “high fructose corn syrup” sounds scary. But as we have already found out, its content is actually not much higher than regular sugar.
(By the way, agave nectar? It’s about 80% fructose . It’s considered healthy because of its low glycemic index, but that’s only because it’s low in glucose. And its low glucose content is due to its high fructose content. So if you avoid high-fructose corn syrup because of the fructose, you really shouldn’t substitute agave nectar for it if you want to remain ideologically consistent.)
In any case, if pressed, those who claim sugar is healthier than high-fructose corn syrup will tell you that it has more fructose. Yes, that’s true: High-fructose corn syrup is 55% fructose, while sucrose is about 50%. But even if fructose is slightly worse than glucose, how much sugar are you consuming that a 5% difference between the two sweeteners would make a difference to your health?
The World Health Organization recommends consuming no more than 5% of calories from “free” sugars (similar to added sugar). That’s 100 calories if you eat 2,000 calories a day. The U.S. guidelines are a little less ambitious, suggesting no more than 5–10%, or about 100–200 calories a day. That’s 25 to 50 grams of added sugar per day. A single 16.9-ounce (475-mL) bottle of cola is slightly over that limit (55 grams of sugar), regardless of whether it’s made with sugar or high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
Let’s say you don’t exceed that limit. If you drink a cola with high-fructose corn syrup, 30.25 grams of those sugars are fructose. If you drink a cola with cane sugar, you’re getting 27.5 grams of fructose. That’s less than three grams of difference. Do you think there’s any health impact from whether those three grams of sugar are one kind or the other?
What if you regularly drink more than one Coke a day? Let’s say you drink 10. Then you’re getting 27.5 grams more fructose (and 27.5 grams less glucose) than if you drank a sugar-sweetened Coke. In that case, you actually have a problem, and that problem is that you’re drinking ten Coke’s a day . That’s 550 grams of sugar a day, or 2,200 calories, which is about the daily calorie intake of an average-sized or short person.
The Real Reason Coca-Cola Does This
No one cares about those 3 (or 30) grams of sugar. When Coca-Cola announced plans to add its sugar-laden cola to the lineup , it didn’t say that the company was concerned about consumer health or anything like that. Instead, Coca-Cola heard that people were willing to pay for a version of cola that loudly advertised the presence of sugar, and it wanted to get its money’s worth!
Specifically, the company said: “As part of its ongoing innovation program, the company plans to launch a product made from American cane sugar in the U.S. this fall to expand its portfolio of Coca-Cola-branded products. This addition is intended to complement the company’s extensive core portfolio and offer a broader range of beverage choices to suit different occasions and preferences.”
According to the Washington Post, Coca-Cola’s CEO was even more blunt on a conference call discussing financial results: “We certainly intend to use the full range of sweetener options available to varying degrees where consumers prefer.”
So, Coca-Cola isn’t changing its regular formula, it’s just introducing a new variation. There’s already Diet Coke (sweetened with aspartame), Coke Zero (sweetened with aspartame and acesulfame potassium), Coca-Cola Classic (with high-fructose corn syrup), and a new drink, as yet unnamed, that will be sweetened with cane sugar.
This is entirely consistent with Coca-Cola’s commitment to offering what it thinks people will buy. There’s no good reason to offer Diet Coke and Coke Zero, but the two drinks are slightly different brands, and people say they taste slightly different, so by golly, Coca-Cola will sell both as long as it seems like a smart business decision. Just like it sold Tab (Coca-Cola’s original Diet Coke) alongside Diet Coke until 2020 .
The culmination of all this is that Coca-Cola has long sold a sugar-sweetened version. In some markets, you can see yellow caps on Coca-Cola bottles in the spring. This is Kosher for Passover Coca-Cola , made with sugar instead of corn syrup, since corn is a grain. Year-round, you can find Mexican Coca-Cola , imported in glass bottles, which is also made with sugar instead of corn syrup. Sugar-sweetened Coca-Cola is said to taste different from regular Coca-Cola. I’ve tried both and haven’t noticed a difference.
Which brings us back to Robert Kennedy Jr.’s proud announcement that Steak ‘n Shake (healthy eatery, right?) would be serving sugar-laden cola in glass bottles in a week. I bet they’re not waiting for Coca-Cola to introduce their new product, they’re just planning on serving Mexican cola.