Things that didn’t make the cut: I confirmed with the FDA that if you put high fructose corn syrup in the bottle, the label can't say “sugar,” or “cane sugar,” regardless of where it was bottled. I also dug down through the chain of citations far enough that I had to go to the Library of Congress to discover that Svante Arrhenius, one of the most important chemists ever, published a study on the kinetics of acid catalyzed sucrose hydrolysis in 1889, so it's not exactly a new discovery.
I'm from the UK and live in California. To me, US coke tastes like most American things. Slightly off. In this case, it tastes like the nozzle at the factory wasn't cleaned after just getting done making root beer. Cinnamon. US coke tastes like they add cinnamon. It leaps out at me because I cannot stand cinnamon and the US infatuation with it (and cheap yellow fake Cheddar cheese, but that's another thing Americans just do wrong, for another time.) ;)
Please note that all over the world artificial sweetners are being added almost every product Coca Cola controls, not just the diet varieties. I've noticed that the only popular sodas without artificial sweetners tend to be some of the DR Pepper company products. I used to fight to get real sugar. Now I fight to get even corn syrup without artificial sweetners.
What scares me is the CIA backed sugar industry, or I should say that the CIA is still backed by the sugar industry... over a hundred years later.. it's been that way since the Kaplan family took over sugar production in Cuba and later DR. Gulf and Western would later get involved. They funded socialists and their rivals at the same time.
I see that written anytime he is brought up. That man suffers from white guilt. I watched the video way back when, and remember thinking Mexicans drink 4 liters of soda, mainly coke, a day. That is the average. Then he blames Coke for not cleaning their water for them. Because yeah, soda companies are responsible for the governments job.
Johnny Harris was good being relatively informed during the Borders series, because he was given the funding to uh. Be There. and had useful things to say about what was In Front Of (And Directly Behind) him.
Johnny Harris is a gen Z mister beast type clickbait view farm pseudo journalist. He packs a 6 minute story into 30 minutes. He has an interesting story most of the time, but he combines it with an influencer style and emotional appeal and 600,000 jump cuts and it feels more emotional than factual. He covers fascinating stories, his style of video just feels less journalism and more of an act.
I'm a high school chemistry teacher and immediately thought two things: 1) You're not testing for the presence of sucrose, you're testing for the presence of glucose/fructose. 2) Of course glucose and fructose will be present because the sugar gets hydrolyzed - that's why it's as sweet as it is. I'm not saying I'm amazing (well, maybe a little) but just being appalled that the authors and referees of a published food science article would not be aware of this. Heck, if you've ever made your own hummingbird nectar then you've hydrolyzed sucrose into glucose and fructose (via heat, typically). This isn't advanced or exotic chemistry.
The fact that the comment right above yours said "I did Mexican coke in the 90s. It was legit." and the fact that yours starts with "I'm a high school chemistry teacher..." and contains no hyphen is... 🤔🧐 But high or not, you are on point. I have NO formal training in chemistry beyond some 1st year chem, but as soon as he started doing the reagent test, I was bouncing off my chair going "it's the acid, it's the acid!" How that article turned into a back and forth of published peer-reviewed articles for a couple of years is beyond me.
Tspis, what hyphen are you talking about when referring to "I'm a high school teacher..."? There is no hyphen because High School is two words-- no hyphen.
I'm pretty sure everyone who knows what sucrose is would respond with, "Well, of course, there would be glucose in it." I think, the surprising fact is that nearly all of the sucrose gets hydrolyzed so quickly without significant heat being applied. My somewhat naive expectation would have been to find all three sugars in some sort of a proportion in the final drink. But the fact that it's practically all fructose and glucose means that drinks made with sucrose aren't actually different. Yet, clearly, they taste different, so something else must be going on. Are they just a different "formula" with a marketing spin that makes it sound like it's because of the sugar, when it's really not? I really want to know now.
Unrated comment. To me even if they are exactly the same. Glass is always better. Just like beer. It's exactly the same, but the glass is more enjoyable.
@@jakoverslept3096 The companies actually line the aluminum cans with chemicals to keep the beverages "fresher" so that's why I prefer glass over aluminum or plastic.
I went back to Mexico a month ago, and they've changed the recipe they drink there now. Also everything now tagged with health labels of what it has in excess. It's not as good as it was 4 years go or so.
Reminds me of when Subway was sued for not having tuna in its tuna sandwich. The people suing said they knew because when they sent Subway's Tuna to a lab the lab found no tuna DNA. Turns out when you can any tuna the DNA is denatured. So you can literally catch a tuna from the ocean, can it, then DNA test it and no tuna DNA will be found.
I worked at a pure cane sugar bottling plant and I can confirm that we didn’t have any corn syrup in stock. However, we test Brix levels rather than sucrose or glucose levels, so formulation could be done with either. Also, I think what tastes different in sugar vs corn syrup sweetened sodas isn’t the fructose-to-glucose ratio, but the other trace molecules in there that add an off flavor since neither are 100% pure.
I’m curious what the true difference is. In beverages HFCS makes my teeth hurt instantly, whereas “sugar sweetened” only bother them I don’t brush for a while after. There’s some difference for sure but I can’t follow the chemistry.
@@JasonJrake most likely the acid part of the soda already used most of it on the sugar, were in a fructose soda the acid is still pure and can affect your teeth.
@@piccorozthis would make a lot of sense. Every time something I've drunk has changed its formulation to HFCS in my life I've immediately quit drinking it because I can tell and usually don't even finish the bottle. This started when I unintentionally quit soda in the 90s because it just didn't taste good anymore. I'm perfectly open to it being related to a reduction in the acid, since I dislike even sugar sweetened drinks if they have too much citric acid (Gold Peak sweet tea, notably). It's not science but it's a sensible hypothesis too start from for sure.
Thank you. I can for sure taste the difference. Put any two head to head, I can always pick out the cane sugar 100% of the time. I’ve never described it as sweeter, the only description I can say is it is a “cleaner finish.”
Sucrose is a combination of glucose and fructose. So why would anyone say there's no fructose in something sweetened by Cane Sugar, which is predominantly Sucrose? The whole question seems nonsensical.
The distinction is that sucrose is a single disaccharide molecule that can be *broken apart into* glucose and fructose units. Before it's broken apart, it has different culinary and biological properties from that 50/50 mixture (which is known as "invert sugar" due to the change in how it polarizes light). But yes, if you leave sucrose in a high-acid environment, it does become invert sugar, and at that point there's really no distinction.
@@timmccormack3930 Sucrose is broken down into fructose and glucose in the small intestine. A soda with pure cane sugar with three or four grapes, or a small apple, is basically the same as a bit larger volume of soda with HFCS. The distinction is nutritionally irrelevant. People who think there's something wrong with fructose per se (as opposed to overall diet) should abstain from grapes, apples and especially jackfruit.
Ooooh, i always just assumed that adding something else than sugar simply made it harder for the sugar to cristallize, the same way salt prevents water from freezing.
Is that why coke has a lemony hint to it? I went over to Pepsi years ago and now when I drink coke I can really really taste a citrus flavour that I couldn’t when coke was my go to.
you can be a bit more controlled if you just use outright citric acid, plus its like a few dollars for several pounds of it, way cheaper than lemons and way more potent, and doesnt affect the flavor as much
@@Incomudro1963 your right, I’ve never used Mexican coke. In all seriousness though, I’ve used coke several times to clean oil stains and discoloration from concrete and it really works, much better than any commercial product designed to clean it.
I'm not a chemist but as soon as you said something else was going on, I immediately wondered what the acid was doing to the sucrose. Who says that one semester of chemistry didn't pay off?? 😂
I feel like he teed up the phosphoric acid when going through his ingredients. My science brain alerted because acids and sugars love to get they freak on, and my filmmaking brain alerted at the Chekhov's Gun.
I've known about sucrose and invert sugar for years, so I figured it out pretty early in the video... but for some reason it never occurred to me (before this video) that that would happen in sucrose-sweetened cola!
I failed chemistry and even I thought that there could be some chemical reaction going on that breaks down the sucrose. The people who wrote that original paper should be thoroughly embarrassed.
I used to be a beekeeper, and I’d invert sucrose for overwintering bees by boiling it with some vinegar. The resulting fructose and glucose are more easily digestible by the bees. As soon as you mentioned adding the acid to the mix, I knew what result you were going to get and why. Chemistry is so interesting!
It’s so crazy that you did this video, I’m 53 years old and I’m a Mexican. And I’ve been loving Mexican Coke forever. But these last several years, I started telling myself if I could even taste the difference anymore. I thought it was just me getting older or something. Because I really couldn’t tell the difference and Mexico is way more expensive over here in my city.So this video definitely helped me out a lot. I’m not spending that crazy money for Mexican Coke anymore.
Did they start putting the old amount of sugar back into their coke? Amlo had made it to where coke in Mexico was mostly artificial sweeteners due to covid co-morbidities. Only reason I noticed was around that time I visited Mexico and got a "regular" coke but it tasted like diet coke. I looked it up and Amlo had made a big push to remove a lot of sugar from soda.
@@Carguyforlife yeah! Bc all the legislation about excessive amount of sugar, fat, sodium, fat, etc on some products, some special black hexagonal labels were placed on the packages.. it helped bc the food companies started to reformulate the products, they contain less sugar and so on.I still think the coca is so sweet for me lol..
@@Robespierre-lI This is a pattern of behavior. Johnny Harris is a well established disinformation agent and even when he isn't literally being paid to lie he gets things wrong constantly.
@@Thousandpointsoflight after watching his Pathetic episode where he desperately trying to sell me some copy paste Atlantis map I cannot take him seriously! 😂😂😂
I have a friend that drinks lots of Coke. I had him do blind test a few times each of canned, plastic bottle, US 8oz glass bottle, Mexican 12oz glass bottle, and fountain from McDonalds. The only two he couldn't consistently identify correctly were between the two glass bottles. He always picked the glass as the better taste but could not always pick which was Mexican and which was U.S. It was not a huge amount of samples and not 100% scientifically proper testing, but it did lean toward the glass being the major component in the effect on flavor.
McDonald’s has the best brix according to my husband. He worked in the restaurant business for 28 years. He says McD pays Coke to monitor their soda/syrup ratio- brix. Most other places water down their sodas.
The can and the plastic bottle are the same. Cans are lined with a very thin BPA (plastic) liner to avoid the drink from eating through the aluminum. So ultimately it's still just in a plastic container. Fun test, have your friends blind taste test Coke vs Pepsi. I pissed off my friends by proving they couldn't accurately pick one from the other reliably. It was also done as a double blind study by scientists a while back, and they also proved that since they are basically the same, the vast majority of purple can't tell the difference
I'm ancient and grew up on glass bottle Coca-Cola. When cans of coke became a thing, I tried a few and absolutely couldn't stand the taste. There is some awful metallic note in the taste. Plastic bottle coke has its own off notes (generally seeming a little flat to me) but at least it doesn't have the metallic taste. I can tolerate it, but don't like it. I've has Mexican bottled coke a few times when visiting Mexico long ago, and it tasted like Coke to me. I didn't have any way to do an A/B test so I can't say they were _exactly_ the same, but they were at least real close. Of course, this was long enough ago US Coke may still have been using sugar. These days I pretty much only drink coke from a fountain when I'm eating out. It is much superior (imho) to plastic bottles or (yuck!) cans. (And don't even get me started on the taste of diet coke. Double-yuck!)
I used to drink a lot of coke and I guarantee you I could tell you if it came out of a can or a bottle. And at this point the only thing I find really great is the Mexican Coke. But it's also not just the flavor. It's a texture in the liquid if that makes sense.
yup. It stopped tasting good more than a decade ago. I still kept drinking it for a few years until I finally gave up once I accepted the taste was never coming back. Now it tastes more acid, kinda salty, almost like plain carbonated water. It doesn't really have that sweetness it used to have and it's not dependent of the kind of bottle it comes from, though my brain would still prefer can > glass > plastic if I had to choose.
Yes I have heard that too. The coke sold in mexico doesn't use real sugar, it uses high fructose corn syrup. Only the coke made for expot to the U.S.A. contains cane sugar . @@captainofiron
Sucrose is a disacchride composed fructose and glucose. In acidic media sucrose is decomposed into glucose and fructose. This reaction has been well known for more than 100 years. The paper authors that indicate that sucrose is hydrolyzed are correct.
@@johnd5398 so you basically discounted the entire statement because they missed an "a"? get off the internet. the statement is correct, it's a simple type-o.
@@abmoore06 I get all this, but the general public has this idea that HFCS is bad for you and cane sugar is not as bad. If the inversion takes place and break down the sucrose into fructose and glucose, is it functionally any different? How much of a difference in the ratio?
Sucrose inversion was the first thing that occurred to me, but for the wrong reason. The Benedicts test uses a boiling water bath, and heating a sucrose-water solution is a guaranteed way to also produce inverted sucrose. But in retrospect, he acid component seem like the real smoking gun (but I still wish you had done the Benedicts test on a sucrose+water solution too :) )
@@jpdemer5 I believe @davidrinker1614 was postulating that a sucrose inversion could occur from the heat of the boiling water bath, versus of the ph of the reagent.
@@jpdemer5 yeah, would have been cool to see the benedict's test work out to show no fruc/glucos in a water-sucros sample. Just to show both possible outcomes from the benedict's test. But, it's not central to the issue at hand, so leaving it out makes sense too.
Heating is also relevant as the bottle coke is pasteurized to sterilize it. I suspect even a fresh off the line Mexican coke will have large amounts of fructose and glucose in it.
As is SOOoo often the case, the answer to what people believe is a "simple question" appears to be more complicated and not at all what the "Yes-OR-No crowd" are interested in hearing... So thanks for taking the time and effort of actually looking into this question to further and showing that this "rabbit hole" did exist but it went in a totally "other directions" than many(most?) people seemingly believed. Best regards.
Johnny Harris is wrong about a lot of stuff. That’s the issue when journalists try to talk about just about everything even tough they have zero education in science
But he does rely on actual experts as a basis for his videos. Unfortunately with science it's easy enough for even scientists to get it wrong. In this case he relied on a published paper without digging deep enough to find the refutation of said paper by other scientists. I think that's an easy mistake as in this case there was a paper that was still being referenced that agreed with the premise. No need to keep looking.
@@nanoflower1 This is not a case of relying on experts - it is an example of parroting nonsense due to Dunning-Kruger effect and confirmation bias. Also, so called "experts" clearly lack elementary understanding of chemistry they're supposedly experts on. FFS how can you miss hydrolysis of sucrose?
As a Mexican who lives in both countries, I can say that some of us were able to tell that coca cola company has been changing the flavor of this soda in 🇲🇽. The flavor is turning little by little to the American flavor, and I guess that's their way to make the transition "so we don't notice" from cane sugar to high fructose. So yes, Mexican coca cola taste has been changing little by little throughout the years (its my opinion and I could be wrong)
💯💯 as a long time purchaser of Mexican Coke in the states... especially within like idk ~5-7yrs ago it's become basically the same taste as American Coke. I still buy it sometimes for the glass bottle. But I swear it used to taste more different!!!! -- it's really got me questioning my sanity 😅 -- but I agree you! I think they changed it over time. Wouldn't be the first time Coca-Cola pulled a sneaky move like that 😔
Mexican government passed a law that imposed a tax on all beverages sweetened with sugar. So hence coca cola and other companies in Mexico moved away from sugar cane as the sweetener. So yes, it's flavor now it's just the same as American cola
What an interesting investigation! I also recently learned that honey is very similar to high fructose corn syrup in terms of fructose-glucose ratio. Sugar chemistry is not widely understood, considering how common it is in diet. Thanks for making this video.
@@louistournas120 nope, otherwise honey would be far far less sweet than it is. As always, the big issue is how much total sugars we're ingesting in our diets. Wayyyy down on the list is what form it takes. As long as it contains a significant amount of fructose, it's going to be noticeably worse for your health than pure glocuse based products. HFCS being an easy to work with syrup just made it even easier and cheaper for many American processed food companies to inject it into all kinds of products, than cane sugar.
@ivolol so in reality sucrose is likely worse than hfcs, you're still consuming around 50% fructose in both cases, but it's sweetness is diminished in sucrose so you're consuming more overall with the sucrose (10 to 25% more according to the joogle).
@@xxportalxx. It is my understanding that HFCS actually contains a higher than 55% fructose. The sweetness is a factor. Glucose tastes less sweet than fructose. If you use fructose, you can use less and the product becomes cheaper. So, sucrose comes out more expensive because you need more of it, even though it is a disacarride. In our body, it gets catalyzed to glucose and fructose (monosacarrides). I think corn syrup is pure glucose, so they use an enzyme to convert some of it to fructose. That way, they can use less, thus it reduces the price. As for health, fructose is a problem. Also, they add these sugars to ketchup and everything and they talk about reducing fat intake to lose weight and be healthy. They didn’t talk about reducing sugars in the 80s to be healthy.
It's a big difference in sodium, so that could be all there is to it, although I assume there are other differences between the two, as well. We've also got a video on how salt affects other flavors, the short version is it's complicated: th-cam.com/video/dWatMuHZIxE/w-d-xo.html
If it is *only* the salt, one way to test this would be to add the right amount of salt to HFCS Coke. Although when it comes to anything taste-related, the exact process and order of operations can alter the flavor in a way you can't check for with simple chemical tests.
I still think we CAN taste a diff btwn sugar that has been broken down into glucose and fructose, and HFCS; as the ratios differ, and some folk can tell that diff alone i feel, even if these had the same sodium lvls (in fact, id bet the flavour is more noticeably diff with the same sodium lvls; as the sodium lvls have to be adjusted to compensate for the exact flavour of the drink - if ya leave it the same, one coke will taste wrong bcuz its not salty enuf and too sweet; just bcuz these sugars taste diff)
@@ACSReactions I rly do think there is a diff btwn the taste of sugar broken down into a 50/50 mix and HFCS, as you pt out the ratios differ - in fact, the salt lvl bein diff further lends credibility to this; bcuz theyre adjustin the salt lvl to compensate for the diffs in flavour caused by the diffs in sugar used If they didnt adjust the salt lvl, the mexican coke wud taste undersalty and less like coke; distinctly less i believe, hence why they add the extra salt - its almost def to compensate for flavour diffs in the sugar concentrations
It's the glass bottle. Being Christmas time, Coke likes to put out small glass bottles usually with their iconic Santa on the label (it's US coke with corn syrup). Buy some, chill and drink. Delicious glass bottle coke.
Inverting sucrose was one of the lab experiments I did in college way back in the 1970’s. We used chloroacetic acid instead of phosphoric and monitored the reaction by both rotation of polarized light, the classic method from which the term inversion originates, and by NMR, way more modern. Chloroacetic acid got the job done in a couple of hours. Weak phosphoric is undoubtably slower, but Mexican Coke can sit in a bottle for weeks or months, easily before it gets to a consumer. An undergrad with access to an NMR could probably do a follow-up experiment to find the rate of reaction.
Inversion rate of sucrose in cola-type soft drinks has been looked into many times before. One of the more recent paper I have found is Monsivais,Perrigue and Drewnowski. "Sugars and satiety: does the type of sweetener make a difference?." The American journal of clinical nutrition 86, no. 1 (2007): 116-123. In short, 50% of sucrose would have hydrolysed 10 days after bottling and only around 5% of sucrose remains 1 year later.
@ It was 50 years ago and I don’t recall the reason. I can’t explain why I recall the acid and not the reason for its use. Memory and forgetting are odd that way. It may have been simply to have a lab experiment that could complete in a couple hours and it also may have been, in the NMR version of the experiment, to have an acid that wouldn’t interfere with the NMR peak we needed to measure. The professor was quite bright and knowledgeable, so I’m sure he had a good reason for that choice.
@@SsuperNnova Maybe it gives a reaction rate that's convenient for a student lab experiment? Not so fast that there's no time to take a series of measurements (there might be just one polarimeter in the classroom), and not so slow that it takes hours to get results.
I was screaming invertion for the first half of the video. Soft drinks manufacturers have continuous monitoring of the sugar content (It's probably an indirect measure, but they have a number related to sugar content to target) of drinks going into the bottler/canner to ensure that they're mixing the syrup and additional water in correct ratios. At a certain point in production, the readings all change because the sugar has inverted, so they then compare to a second target value.
As a home brewer that makes a fruit wine (fermented lemonade with other fruits), I use table sugar for fermentation, but the yeast metabolism for fructose vs sucrose is different. This will cause a more cider taste due to the byproducts of the different metabolic steps the yeast is taking. So, I have been inverting table sugar with acid and heat for years. Since my base is lemon juice, that is the acid I use to invert the sugar. I suspected inversion of the sugar molecules was what was happening here, with both carbonic acid and phosphoric acid in the solution - it is quite literally only a matter of time for it to occur.
I think they recently changed the formula. Before sugar taxes and warning labels in Mexico, many products had to change recipes. Coke labels used to say 'excess sugars' and 'excess calories,' but now some also say 'contains sweeteners.' Supposedly, the regular and smaller cans are still made only with sugar.
These days in the USA sucrose is as likely to be beet as cane sugar.. The same tariff that favors corn syrup over cane also made domestically produced beet sugar competitive. I hadn't realized this until Jerry Hickey pointed it out on the radio a few years ago. Until then beet sugar had been just a specialized niche product, but now it's about half the country's sucrose.
You're thinking of Europe. Most of our sugar still comes from the old cane plantations in Florida, the Caribbean and Hawaii. In the PACNW you may find some beet sugar. They grow the beats in Idaho.
Michigan Sugar Company produces over 1.3 billion pounds of sugar each year, making it the third largest beet sugar processor in the United States, sold under the Pioneer Sugar brand. I drive past one of their factories in Croswell to visit relatives down state.
@@SaanMigwell Nope. Sorry. Beets are grown in a lot of areas. Beets are also comparable to wheat, corn, and soy for being sprayed with glyphosates and being GMO's. Beets USED to be healthy but no longer.
2:00 ... but... when you heat sucrose it can decompose into its monomers, glucose and fructose. (still mid watch, just placing a bet on this being why)
If you were a kid in the 80's, you will be able to taste the difference. At that time, ALL sodas that were not Diet were made with sucrose. I can't drink a high fructose corn syrup soda because it has an aftertaste to me and doesn't taste like a pure sweetness. If I do drink a soda, it is a Mexican coke.
I agree with you 100%! I can definitely tell the difference. There is a definite after taste with the American Coke. Mexican Coke tastes more like I remember it tasting back in the 80's before they started messing with it.
Fun fact: corn syrup is cheaper than cane sugar in the US because of tariffs on sugar imports, and gov't subsidies for corn farmers. Don't expect _that_ to change any time soon!
I'd be surprised if any pop on a store shelf sweetened with cane sugar isn't fully inverted. You don't want it to remain sucrose because of solubility and the syrup will almost certainly be heated at some point in mixing/bottling for sanitary reasons. Also, I'm surprised that there was any question about this in the first place since it is pretty common chemistry. We covered it at the local community college 20 plus years ago. Anyone writing an academic paper about food chemistry in the last century should have already known this.
Every time I hear Americans talking about how we use only sugar I'm like "What are you talking about?", I went to get one but funny XD glass bottles have no information since they are for return and the ingredients can change. Anyway, a Coke here has some sugars (fructose and sugar) but sucralose is labeled as another ingredient. Laws put a lot of taxes on trying to get healthier drinks, which is why we don't use only sugar anymore, they need to keep down the calories.
Hi, I randomly stumbled upon your video, and since I coincidentally have a Mexican coke in my hand i'm sharing you what the ingredients are shown in Mexico for your reference: Regular Coke Carbonated water, Added sugars (high fructose syrup and sugar), Class IV caramel, Phosphoric acid, Flavourings, Sucralose (4.4 mg/100 g) and Caffeine SODIUM 10mg / 100ml
For me it's always been the aftertaste of HFCS. The "Real" sugar ones seem to be a flavor punch, and then nothing, where the American version seems to stick around longer. Now I'm off to get a volunteer for a blind test. ha
You’re not tasting the HFCS as an aftertaste. It’s the plastic of the bottle or the lining of the can being eaten away (in small amounts) by the acidity of the coke. Mexican coke is always (at least in the us) in glass, which doesn’t react. Get an American Coke in the glass bottles.
@@dragonkyng You're making assumptions. I prefer Coke from glass, and can still taste a difference between HFCS in glass, and real sugar in glass. I've even tasted several of the real sugar Pepsi ones in aluminum, and I swear I can detect the aftertaste of HFCS. Even with my tendency to have nocebo reactions, I still taste a difference. But like the video pointed out maybe the sodium content is making me think differently. Blind tests are needed.
Man, I never thought I’d see such an enjoyable geeked out presentation on the science of my favorite soda. Your video is easy to understand and follow. A title that isn’t just click bait, the engaging delivery on the way you authored the subject matter, as well as the crisp editing all have a highly professional and polished feel. First visit to your feed, keep up the good work👍🏽. Subscribed
I'm Mexican and I can say Coke now tastes different than when I was a kid (I'm 49 now). I don't know the dates accurately but I remember in the late 90s or early 2000's the government passed an act to eliminate cane sugar from beverages because -they said- it was the main reason for the concerning increase in diabetes cases in the country. I remember also that some politicians said the real reason was because Mexico had agreed to buy HFCS from the US and used the diabetes as a pretext. In the following years Coca Cola started replacing cane sugar with HFCS and we GenXers started noticing a change in flavor. Flavor difference in glass/PET bottles has nothing to do with the sweetener, be it HFCS or sugar, but with the bottle itself. It was discovered that PET releases aldehydes into the beverages when exposed to solar light. And I haven't seen a light-proof Coca Cola transport vehicle yet. Also, some vendors put the bottles outdoors when selling their merchandise, like street food. Glass is inert so the flavor does not change as in PET bottles.
> And I haven't seen a light-proof Coca Cola transport vehicle yet I yet to see a non-light-proof transport vehicle yet.. Not saying the bottles isn't exposed to some light, but surly it doesn't happen inside the transport vehicle..
Yes, sucrose is essentially a fructose and glucose molecule bonded together. Both of those monosaccharides (fructose and glucose) exist in both a ring form and a straight chain form, and it's the straight chain form that has a carbonyl group and can react with Benedict's test. But once they're bonded together into sucrose, both are locked into their ring forms with no carbonyl groups and no ability to react with Benedict's solution. If you break that bond with H+ then you're left with regular old fructose and glucose.
@@ACSReactions Thanks for the answer. My confusion comes from (transcript): ------ I tracked down that study 'cause I was curious 0:13 and I confirmed that yes, the authors found zero grams of sucrose in a bottle of Mexican Coke. Now cane sugar, which is what Mexican Coke claims to be sweetened with, it is the whole point of Mexican Coke, is just sucrose. High fructose corn syrup, on the other hand is a mixture 0:29 of fructose and glucose. ------ I think this needs to be expanded on since it's really confusing what you're testing since, for me (and my limited knowledge of this) it looks like from your comment on HFCS that - to me - it's the "same" as sucrose. What is the difference between glucose + fructose of sucrose and HFCS? Again, thanks for your response and these are some of my favourite videos.
HFCS contains free glucose and fructose, which are both monosaccharides. Cane sugar contains only sucrose, which is a different molecule formed by a chemical bond between a fructose molecule and a glucose molecule. Think of it like this: if fructose and glucose were hydrogen and oxygen, then sucrose would be water. Technically water is made of hydrogen and oxygen, but there's a big difference between a bottle of water and a bottle of separated hydrogen and oxygen. (Ok, water is 2 hydrogens and 1 oxygen, whereas sucrose is 1 fructose and 1 glucose, but you get the idea, right?)
Bang!!! No more mystery!!! For almost 20 years I asked myself why Coca-Cola taste (canned, glass bottle or PET, doesn't matter) uses to change (for worse) after 30 to 45 days from labeled production date. Here in Brazil our Coca-Cola is sweetened with sugarcane 😎
Excellent video. Good illustration of the need to know the basic chemistry of the stuff you're measuring before you can rely on the measurements you make. Thanks for sharing.
What you need go test is ratio of the two sugars. It one of sugars that we usually associate with sweetness. Overall good job explaining the hydrolysis of sugar but needs to go to ratio.
The curious part is that this is a common lesson in biology 1 in college. At the same time, I have preferred Mexican coke for a long time because, to me, it has a more "balanced" flavor. This is more evident when the coke is slightly warmer than you might prefer it to be. The extra salt explains this brilliantly, far better than attributing it to cane sugar.
This was really interesting and the first video I've seen of yours! One thing I want to point out where you stated that people can't taste the difference of HFCS and Came Sugar drinks. You're only partially correct. There's a medication called Topamax (Topiramate) and it messes with your brain chemistry really bad for sense of taste for soda. In some people myself included there is a side effect where HFCS tastes absolutely HORRENDOUS. I can't drink American sodas but a European soda I can drink no problem minus the weird carbonation side effect. Food for thought. Lots of people take Topamax for Migrations and it's used for epilepsy and a few other things as well. This video helped me understand why some Mexican Cokes taste good and some taste bad. I assumed it was the phosphoric acid and turns out I'm wrong.
Biochemistry 101! And yes I've done blind taste tests where they were astonished that I could tell the difference between Coke, Pepsi, RC, double cola, And I might add that sugar, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, stevia, sucralose, aliolos, monk fruit, saccharin, nutra sweet and others all taste distinctly different and unlike each other. Honey which should never be heated to boiling tastes good in tea but is nasty and coffee. Rosewater on the other hand is good in coffee but nasty in tea. Don't even think about putting rose water in your coke.
Maple syrup is good in coffee. One wouldn't imagine so, but surprisingly it is. I got the idea from a long-defunct brand of ice cream which only used maple syrup and its coffee ice cream was yum.
Sucrose is a combination of fructose and glucose connected by a glycosidic bond. That bond is surprisingly fragile and can result in the two constituents existing separately. What can break this bond? Well, for one thing ... phosphoric acid. Sorry, I didn't watch the video before commenting.
Neat video! Curiously, at the video outset my first thought was: I bet the sucrose splits into its component sugars, glucose and fructose, once it's mixed in the pop. I was unaware of the publicational dispute going on in the background until you displayed it here. Thanks for that. The Coca-Cola Company USED TO claim it made all its syrup for all markets worldwide in Atlanta, and distributed it from there, so that the product is exactly the same no matter where you buy it. That was all over the TV at one time many years ago. Is that no longer a claim they make? Or might something like sodium content be a matter of the local water used (or possibly balancing that local water for pH or some other characteristic) to hydrate the syrup at the local bottling facilities worldwide? My sons and I can detect Mexican vs American Coke 100% of the time. We don't claim which is which, merely that out of 3 cups of the two, we can identify which one is different. At least for me that's not about sweetness. The carbonation is slightly different, and I want to say the texture(??) is slightly different.
This is very interesting. Although this is just my personal experience, I could taste the difference between Dr Pepper in Australia and Dr Pepper in the US. I discovered this completely by accident. When I lived in Australia, I noticed they started importing my favorite soda and immediately bought some. I was completely taken aback when it tasted very different than the Dr Pepper I had the in US (uses corn syrup). It tasted like Dr Pepper bottled in Dublin Texas, which was the only bottler in the US that used cane sugar (although they are no longer around due to the Dublin bottler breaking their contract with Dr Pepper corporate, which is an interesting story on its own). I did not keep a bottle of Aussie Dr Pepper so I have no label to compare but they did taste difference and the only obvious thing on the bottle was cane sugar vs. corn syrup. It wouldn't hold up in a court of law but interesting none the less. Thanks for the work you did on this.
The even funnier thing is expecting to be “helthier”(misspelled for a reason) by just changing from high fructose corn syrup to sugar, in a carbonated drink that also has other components that aren’t great for your health either. Sugar in and of itself is in very high amounts in a lot of foods and most normal people don’t need the levels they are getting in all the processed foods. The idea that Mexican coke is better in multiple ways compared to American can coke is a very ingenious marketing scheme. As with a lot of other brands, often times what you are really buying is the packaging and the theme that is publicized behind the product.
@ several depending on what studies or doctors/nutritionists you decide to believe the validity of. It can go either way though. But that could also mean none of them are unhealthy if you don’t believe any of the negative ones. As with many things related to the human element of error, opinion, hidden motives, and the cult of personality of perceived facts, the only statement anyone can agree on is to disagree. As much as humans like to think they are a bastion of truth and transparency, often times health studies have just as much to do with politics as they do legitimate health risks. Take things with a grain of salt. But I’ve found from what I’ve looked into with the ingredients of coke and other sodas, the synthetic food coloring, the umbrella term known as “artificial flavors” and “natural flavorings” being the catch all term that it is, and the shady business practices multi-billion dollar soda companies make, and the environmental impact of those industries, there’s more to things than just switching high fructose to sugar to make something healthy. I highly doubt any doctor would tell you to drink coke on a regular basis even if it did contain table sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. Yeah it makes a mild difference if any, as the video shows.
Everything in moderation is fine. You will not live longer by avoiding eating ice cream your entire life (as long as it's in moderation). Cane sugar is a little better than high fructose health wise, but still not totally better.
As someone who has done quite of bit of research into fueling for endurance training I was a bit confused watching this initially. It's well understood within the research on fueling that sucrose is made up of a 1:1 ratio of glucose and fructose and breaks down as such in the body. And HFCS 42 has less glucose so I wasn't suprised that your results showed high or higher levels of glucose in the Mexican coke. Makes sense especially if it is broken down in the bottle.
Purely anecdotal comment: I live in México on the border with the U.S., cross frequently and have drank both versions of cocacola throughout my life; have always preferred Mexican bc smt about the flavor, idk. However, around 5ish yrs ago, I noticed Mexican coke tasting different, like it's got artificial sweeteners, at least partially, bc I get the artificial sweetener aftertaste, which I don't like (main reason I'd rather just drink water than diet/zero sugar versions of any soda). I no longer drink Mexican coke bc of this and I stopped drinking the American version bc it tastes like watered down soda, so... thanks CocaCola for turning me away from coke, ig ? Anyways, my point was, bc of this recent change (I suspect) the taste of both is now kinda similar. Mexican coke has been gone (for me) for a while and doing taste tests seems pointless. But good to know about the conversion of sugars in acidic environments ! Nice video.
Have also started tasting the artificial sugars in the plastic bottles and canned versions of "original" coke but had a glass bottled one today and it didn't have the artificial sugar taste (also 7 pesos cheaper goddamn)
@@Brian-tn4cd I rarely drink glass, so my experience there is limited, but it is a sort of common knowledge amongst ppl that glass tastes better. Between plastic and can, I usually prefer can but I'm not sure why, kinda feel it's psychollogical, but I have heard ppl assume it's bc the plastic inevitably sheds off particles and slightly changes the flavor or smt, which kinda makes sense but idk if that's actually happening. Maybe glass is the material that transforms the flavor the least ?
I live in México, and Coke added high fructose corn syrup a few years ago. It tastes way different than what it did before for sure. there were comercial talking about the change in ingredients.
Non-chemists shouldn't do chemical analysis on TH-cam. What really gave it away to me IMMEDITELY, was the ratio of Fructose to glucose in the table. Nearly 50:50. Even high school chem should have taught this to Johnny. TH-cam: caveat emptor. Don't just blindly believe what 'yodels' post.
It's not so much lies... his channel has a strong focus on Johnny Harris telling stories all by himself, and much like any human he has a lot of blind spots. His channel is higher quality than most mainstream journalism, but he would benefit from consulting unbiased experts/scientists more often.
In Mexico youve got to be careful. All bottles of coke had sucralosa (Splenda) in them except the refillable/returnable ones. Not sure why so many Mexican drinks have sucralosa in them.
I'm reminded of an Adam Ragusea video on High Fructose Corn Syrup as well -- in which he explained that there may still be a difference between these two drinks for your body. (Or for some people's). He even mentioned how sucrose can generally break down into Glucose and Sucrose, but specifically (as you mentioned) only at an exactly 50-50 ratio, and in nature this means that we generally only find glucose-sucrose in ratios like this, or with lower fructose - there's /very/ few foods that have "more fructose than glucose" there's plenty with near even splits or "more glucose than fructose". And this is important because our bodies generally need glucose in order to be able to fully process fructose. And in /some/ portion of the population it's believed that excess fructose isn't handled as well as in others, leading to things like heightened blood pressure or some other generic symptoms because their body isn't properly disposing of or processing the excess fructose. (IIRC the science on all this was very limited and not fully understood). TLDR "HFCS has more Froctose (in ratio to glucose) than most natural foods, normally that's not an issue, but for some people it may cause problems if their body doesn't know what to do with it"
I was there a thousand years ago (in the 80's) when Coke & Pepsi changed their formulas and made the switch to HFCS. Around that time, I started to experience digestive issues - gas, irregular BM's, etc. I couldn't tie the symptoms to anything until an allergist made an offhand observation that it might be fructose intolerance. So I did a dietary challenge, which isn't easy because the stuff is EVERYWHERE. The better I got at avoiding HFCS, the fewer bouts I experienced. What really surprised me was that the nasty incidences of acid reflux that had been getting progressively worse for over a decade suddenly ceased. Anyway, I've been treating myself to Mexican Coke (because it is 'safe') without any issues ... but only once or twice a week, which implies that I have been consuming it at a rate that is still within my system's ability to process it. ... and now I know that. So, thank you!
That was exactly the first thing I thought of when you tested high on your homemade coke. My first thought was that the alcohol in the flavor mixed with the low PH could have caused the sugars to breakdown.
That's what I thought too. A majority were able to pick the Mexican coke correctly but at the end he said if you think you can taste the difference you're wrong. I absolutely can. I live on the border and cross frequently, there is a difference. Not just in taste, in texture too, it's less syrupy.
@enlamainyokohama He said if you can tell the difference between the sweetener specifically then you are probably wrong. He acknowledged that some other aspects of the composition (such as sodium) are different
All things food research is a minefield for lay people. Unfathomable quantities of money + several decades of a sustained regulatory capture effort have left us with a study that will tell you every possible verdict for every food. (Ex: steak is bad for your heart, steak is good for your heart). So, really any time you hear any non-expert (and I mean, they have a degree and a license and are an active peer-reviewed researcher you’re confident aren’t in the direct employ of a food conglomerate), be a little wary. It’s not that they’re tying to deceive you, just that our information sphere on it is poisoned. Anyway, afaik, and as of a policy review project I did for work 6 months ago: our pancreas doesn’t really care what form of sugar goes into something. It still has to deal with keeping our blood at the right glucose levels. Our brain, however, does care. (As, most likely does our stomach, as the emerging research around neurons in the stomach and how they interact with satiation & addiction that Ozempic is spearheading). HFCS as the base ingredient seems to generally be better at setting up addiction and more likely to fail to satiate you (so you’ll drink more of it than otherwise). But, ultimately, it mostly matters what your total sugar intake is over a day/week/month, and what your total calories in vs burnt is. Anything that you become addicted to and consume a lot of will become unhealthy if it starts pushing a major calorie surplus you wouldn’t otherwise have. Edit: typo and left a word out in the bit on neurons in the stomach. It’s a very interesting field of research that could, even probably will, tell us things about how addictions of all forms operate biologically that we didn’t know at all in the coming years. Edit 2: technically it’s not just Ozempic spearheading this and it’s the entire class of medicines that interact directly with the neural pathways & receptors in the stomach, but everyone has heard of Ozempic at this point so I figured that was more accessible.
I'm guessing this is sarcasm. People hear things and they assume they're right even when they aren't, especially when enough people say it. Drives me nuts. I tell them to Google the component monosaccharides of HFCS and table sugar and get back to me. The real problem that they miss though it's staring them right in the face is that people eat too much and not just sugar.
“Healthier” doesn’t mean it’s healthy it just means it’s “not AS bad” Soda isn’t good for you, ever. Sugar in moderation is good in foods but just drinking sugar chemical water isn’t. But the HFCS is worse.
There are studies that prove consuming HFCS does have a different effect in human bodies then consuming sugar - as illustrated here, chemistry is a complex series of interactions - only made more complicated when intersecting with the complex field of biology. Chemists often make the mistake of applying the chemistry rules and assume biology follows similar principles - but if this was true we would not have a need for human safety studies in medicine, and math would be able to explain life science the same way it can explain chemistry - and obviously this is proven to be not the case! Biology is a highly complex interaction that includes chemistry, so it can be easy to make incorrect assumptions. Biology studies have a lot more data to contend with and have a much more difficult time proving claims - it is not conclusively proven that there is no difference OR a significant difference between consuming high fructose corn syrup and sugar - but there is evidence that *suggests* the two do interact with human biology differently, even if chemically they are almost identical. This concept is further illustrated by the debate over vitamins and synthetic foods - but human testing has proven biology does not necessarily react to chemically identical substances in the same way as the same substance produced by biology (plants). (One clear example - iron is better absorbed through food than iron supplements, and this is well documented.) We don’t have any scientific consensus as to why, other than it is very complex, and chemists like to argue that that isn’t the case (despite the many studies and examples and us not being able to make a meal in pill) because biology functions on a level that just doesn’t make sense in the world of chemistry.
What if they are the same ingredients, but what changes is the quality of the ingredients and where they come from. Fructose, glucose, etc. can be extracted in various ways and various compounds.
55 : 42 ratio broke my brain for a second. I was like, "but that doesn't add up to 100" before remembering ratios don't need to do that, lol. Edit: TH-cam thought my ratio was a timestamp, even though the video doesn't actually go that long ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Wikipedia says that two common formulations of HFCS are 55% fructose by dry weight and 42% fructose by dry weight. So I'm now questioning where this video's 55:42 ratio came from. Chemical reactions with integer ratios tend to have smaller integers.
I worked as a fructose lab chemist testing for fructose-glucose ratios via HPLC. It's 55% fructose, 42% glucose and the rest is solids and water. Of course it's never exactly 55%, products are accepted within a 1% margin of error for fructose, so 54.5 to 55.5%. Also not all HFCS contains 55%, 42% fructose is commonly used for food while the higher one is used in beverages
@@fc-js3qj Thanks for the clarification. It seems to be a bit of a coincidence that there is a 42% fructose HFCS, while HFCS 55 has 42% glucose. That threw me off until your reply.
It's not about the sweetener. It's being bottled in glass that makes it taste much better than being bottled in plastic or aluminium. This applies to any beverage.
I don’t know the answer. I do no that Glass is a much better heat sink than thin plastic Soda in glass will stay colder longer Moore’s Law equates CO2 solubility to temperature So colder Coke is fizzier longer So Coke is colder and fizzier in a Cold Glass Bottle Also if kept long enough coke in a can will ear through the internal thin plastic layer in a can Taste is a complex topic in and of itself
@@VndNvwYvvSvv OH NO, I DIDN'T USE A WORD CORRECTLY. SORRY FOR NOT HAVING A CHEMISTRY DEGREE. I GUESS I SHOULD JUST LEAVE AND STOP WATCHING CHEMISTRY CHANNELS THEN.
@rzeqdw Nobody said that. Notice the immediate overreaction then jumping to a false dilemma of extremes. This is a prime example of a television watcher.
I'd like to point out that the phosphoric acid is most likely just in there as it was used as a steriliser for the equipment used to make coke, it is a so called no rinse steriliser and can be used without the extra step of washing it away after sterilisation.
I can tell the difference between pop/soda sweetened with sucrose, and those sweetened with HFCS. In fact, I once brought examples of each of Sprite to work and did a blind taste test with my coworkers. We could all tell the difference. The flavor is the same, but the consistency on your tongue is different. I’m not sure how to describe it, and this isn’t perfect, but there’s a “tackiness” or slight difference in the stickiness of the drinks sweetened with HFCS. Those sweetened with sucrose taste “cleaner,” no sticky “finish” to the taste.
No you can't. The man scientifically proved there's no sucrose left in the drink. There's more differences between the sucrose sweetened and the HFCS sweetened soda. Those are the differences you're tasting, not the sweeteners.
I hadn't heard about this but was curious. Right after the information about the study was presented my first thought was "something is breaking it down into fructose and glucose". Guys, I never even finished college. People seem to have forgotten how to use their brains and critical thinking skills. I'm glad this video set the record straight!
So I went back to the paper and responses, and I feel like this video is glossing over what is actually going on. The original paper was never intending to claim that cane sugar was not added to Mexican coke, just that there is no sucrose in the final product (and therefore it's not nutritionally much better than drinks sweetened with corn syrup). But actually that was a footnote, the main issue is that the sugar content on drink labels doesn't match what is actually in the bottle. That 'debunking' was basically an industry lobbying group trying to knock down a straw man rather than address the real problem.
Assuming you lived near a bottling plant, you could realistically get a coke that contained at least 70% unreacted sucrose. I don't think we should expect explicit labeling requirements for the reaction products within a food, that seems especially asinine if the levels might change over the course of storage.
@@clankclankimatank I may have been unclear. The total amount of sugar that was added to the drinks in the study were off from what was on the labels - the reaction happening isn't the issue.
@@pianoforte611 huh? You'll have to link the study you're looking at, because the one referenced in the original Johnny Harris video actually has slightly less measured sugar content to what's indicated on the label (11g on label, 10.4g in analysis)
Take a mexican coke , open it and leave it out for 12 hours open, it won't go flat... try that with american coke, it'll go flat in an hour... so there must be a difference
That has nothing to do with sugar. Just how you carbonate the soda. Also no. Mexican coke does go flat when you leave it out. It doesn’t just have infinite co2
I don't care what your video says I can definitely tell there's a difference in the sweetener so they're definitely not both high fructose and might be the parts of my fructose but it's not a definitely tastes more like sugar so I'm going to say I don't care what you say
Well, I am a little confused, that you, as a chemist, did not consider the idea of hydrolysis right from the beginning. I, as an inorganic chemist, did. But then the video would have been pretty short, I suppose.
I am also shocked that I ended up with a university education in chemistry without ever being taught that sucrose hydrolyzes in soda. FWIW the two professors we reached out to for review also hadn’t heard of it (and they work with sugar all day long, mostly in kombucha). I think it’s one of those weird facts that few people know but then once you learn it you’re like OF COURSE, how could I have not known!
@@ACSReactions it's strange that it isn't taught in chemistry class, I am studying medicine in italy and the spontaneus hydrolysis of the glucosidic bond in water was one of the first subjects we learned.
The general consensus is there's not much difference healthwise, even if the sucrose isn't converted to fructose and glucose. It's all bad for you in large amounts. No such thing as a "healthier" sugary drink unless it just has way less sugar of any kind.
That whole thing about acids working as a catalyst is known by many beekeepers because we have to feed our bees sugar syrup during the fall and we use vinegar to invert the sugars to keep them from crystalizing, etc. As soon as you added that phosphoric I knew what the result would be.
I disagree bcuz as we saw ppl can indeed taste the diff and id argue thats bcuz a 50/50 mix of sugars and a 55/42 mix do indeed taste diff to each other - which is even why it has more salt in it, to compensate for flavour diffs btwn the two sugars so it can taste more like coke is supposed to taste like Also, the diff in sodium is so low that it wont matter; if youre low on sodium just add a salt packet to your coke of either kind
@@SylviaRustyFaeSalt is a taste enhancer, I use it in coffee and tea... fantastic... try it! However, if you can actually taste the salt, you've used too much. When I ask the baristas for the salt instead of chocolate powder or cinnamon, they think I'm mad.
@@judewarner1536 Salt does affect flavour yes, i nvr talked about addin enuf to taste it - my pt is just that its not salt alone here, its the ratios of sugars
Things that didn’t make the cut: I confirmed with the FDA that if you put high fructose corn syrup in the bottle, the label can't say “sugar,” or “cane sugar,” regardless of where it was bottled. I also dug down through the chain of citations far enough that I had to go to the Library of Congress to discover that Svante Arrhenius, one of the most important chemists ever, published a study on the kinetics of acid catalyzed sucrose hydrolysis in 1889, so it's not exactly a new discovery.
ISTR that this is how they make UK's Golden Syrup, which I think is also called invert syrup?
I'm from the UK and live in California. To me, US coke tastes like most American things. Slightly off. In this case, it tastes like the nozzle at the factory wasn't cleaned after just getting done making root beer. Cinnamon. US coke tastes like they add cinnamon.
It leaps out at me because I cannot stand cinnamon and the US infatuation with it (and cheap yellow fake Cheddar cheese, but that's another thing Americans just do wrong, for another time.) ;)
Please note that all over the world artificial sweetners are being added almost every product Coca Cola controls, not just the diet varieties.
I've noticed that the only popular sodas without artificial sweetners tend to be some of the DR Pepper company products.
I used to fight to get real sugar. Now I fight to get even corn syrup without artificial sweetners.
What scares me is the CIA backed sugar industry, or I should say that the CIA is still backed by the sugar industry... over a hundred years later.. it's been that way since the Kaplan family took over sugar production in Cuba and later DR. Gulf and Western would later get involved. They funded socialists and their rivals at the same time.
The CIA has been backed by the sugar industry since the Kaplans inception into it over 100 years ago.
Johnny Harris is someone who sounds like he knows what he's talking about until he talks about the thing you know about.
It's called Gell-Mann Amnesia
This applies to a large number of youtubers.
I see that written anytime he is brought up.
That man suffers from white guilt. I watched the video way back when, and remember thinking Mexicans drink 4 liters of soda, mainly coke, a day. That is the average.
Then he blames Coke for not cleaning their water for them. Because yeah, soda companies are responsible for the governments job.
Johnny Harris was good being relatively informed during the Borders series, because he was given the funding to uh. Be There. and had useful things to say about what was In Front Of (And Directly Behind) him.
Johnny Harris is a gen Z mister beast type clickbait view farm pseudo journalist. He packs a 6 minute story into 30 minutes. He has an interesting story most of the time, but he combines it with an influencer style and emotional appeal and 600,000 jump cuts and it feels more emotional than factual.
He covers fascinating stories, his style of video just feels less journalism and more of an act.
I'm a high school chemistry teacher and immediately thought two things: 1) You're not testing for the presence of sucrose, you're testing for the presence of glucose/fructose. 2) Of course glucose and fructose will be present because the sugar gets hydrolyzed - that's why it's as sweet as it is. I'm not saying I'm amazing (well, maybe a little) but just being appalled that the authors and referees of a published food science article would not be aware of this. Heck, if you've ever made your own hummingbird nectar then you've hydrolyzed sucrose into glucose and fructose (via heat, typically). This isn't advanced or exotic chemistry.
The fact that the comment right above yours said "I did Mexican coke in the 90s. It was legit." and the fact that yours starts with "I'm a high school chemistry teacher..." and contains no hyphen is... 🤔🧐
But high or not, you are on point. I have NO formal training in chemistry beyond some 1st year chem, but as soon as he started doing the reagent test, I was bouncing off my chair going "it's the acid, it's the acid!"
How that article turned into a back and forth of published peer-reviewed articles for a couple of years is beyond me.
Tspis, what hyphen are you talking about when referring to "I'm a high school teacher..."?
There is no hyphen because High School is two words-- no hyphen.
@@tspissuch an odd comment🤣
I'm pretty sure everyone who knows what sucrose is would respond with, "Well, of course, there would be glucose in it." I think, the surprising fact is that nearly all of the sucrose gets hydrolyzed so quickly without significant heat being applied. My somewhat naive expectation would have been to find all three sugars in some sort of a proportion in the final drink. But the fact that it's practically all fructose and glucose means that drinks made with sucrose aren't actually different. Yet, clearly, they taste different, so something else must be going on. Are they just a different "formula" with a marketing spin that makes it sound like it's because of the sugar, when it's really not? I really want to know now.
@@tspis because the peers aren’t as smart as we give them credit for.
I still buy it when I can because I prefer the glass bottle.
Unrated comment. To me even if they are exactly the same. Glass is always better. Just like beer. It's exactly the same, but the glass is more enjoyable.
@@jakoverslept3096 The companies actually line the aluminum cans with chemicals to keep the beverages "fresher" so that's why I prefer glass over aluminum or plastic.
I went back to Mexico a month ago, and they've changed the recipe they drink there now. Also everything now tagged with health labels of what it has in excess. It's not as good as it was 4 years go or so.
@@consuminglight I heard that they still import the old recipe to the US but they've changed the one for Mexican consumer market.
@@abnr1983 it is lined with plastic coating to prevent the acid in the coke from degrading the aluminum can
Reminds me of when Subway was sued for not having tuna in its tuna sandwich. The people suing said they knew because when they sent Subway's Tuna to a lab the lab found no tuna DNA. Turns out when you can any tuna the DNA is denatured. So you can literally catch a tuna from the ocean, can it, then DNA test it and no tuna DNA will be found.
that's an honest mistake. how can subway be held responsible for not having tuna in their tuna, just look at that sentence, its rediculous.
The tuna is denatured in the preparation not the caning.
Does the same thing apply to humans? Asking for a friend.
What the 😮
Preparing it is part of the canning process isn't it?
I worked at a pure cane sugar bottling plant and I can confirm that we didn’t have any corn syrup in stock. However, we test Brix levels rather than sucrose or glucose levels, so formulation could be done with either. Also, I think what tastes different in sugar vs corn syrup sweetened sodas isn’t the fructose-to-glucose ratio, but the other trace molecules in there that add an off flavor since neither are 100% pure.
I’m curious what the true difference is. In beverages HFCS makes my teeth hurt instantly, whereas “sugar sweetened” only bother them I don’t brush for a while after.
There’s some difference for sure but I can’t follow the chemistry.
@@JasonJrake most likely the acid part of the soda already used most of it on the sugar, were in a fructose soda the acid is still pure and can affect your teeth.
@@piccorozthis was what i was looking for. My stomach hurts when i drink HFCS but not when it is cane sugar.
@@piccorozthis would make a lot of sense. Every time something I've drunk has changed its formulation to HFCS in my life I've immediately quit drinking it because I can tell and usually don't even finish the bottle. This started when I unintentionally quit soda in the 90s because it just didn't taste good anymore.
I'm perfectly open to it being related to a reduction in the acid, since I dislike even sugar sweetened drinks if they have too much citric acid (Gold Peak sweet tea, notably).
It's not science but it's a sensible hypothesis too start from for sure.
Thank you. I can for sure taste the difference. Put any two head to head, I can always pick out the cane sugar 100% of the time. I’ve never described it as sweeter, the only description I can say is it is a “cleaner finish.”
Sucrose is a combination of glucose and fructose. So why would anyone say there's no fructose in something sweetened by Cane Sugar, which is predominantly Sucrose? The whole question seems nonsensical.
The distinction is that sucrose is a single disaccharide molecule that can be *broken apart into* glucose and fructose units. Before it's broken apart, it has different culinary and biological properties from that 50/50 mixture (which is known as "invert sugar" due to the change in how it polarizes light). But yes, if you leave sucrose in a high-acid environment, it does become invert sugar, and at that point there's really no distinction.
@@timmccormack3930 Sucrose is broken down into fructose and glucose in the small intestine. A soda with pure cane sugar with three or four grapes, or a small apple, is basically the same as a bit larger volume of soda with HFCS. The distinction is nutritionally irrelevant. People who think there's something wrong with fructose per se (as opposed to overall diet) should abstain from grapes, apples and especially jackfruit.
This is why you add a little lemon to your sugar when making simple syrup to get it to thicken and not just recrystallize.
Ooooh, i always just assumed that adding something else than sugar simply made it harder for the sugar to cristallize, the same way salt prevents water from freezing.
And fructose is 1.5-2 times sweeter than sucrose, this is why the syrup is sweeter than sugar.
Is that why coke has a lemony hint to it? I went over to Pepsi years ago and now when I drink coke I can really really taste a citrus flavour that I couldn’t when coke was my go to.
you can be a bit more controlled if you just use outright citric acid, plus its like a few dollars for several pounds of it, way cheaper than lemons and way more potent, and doesnt affect the flavor as much
@@Morbazan125 No, lemon and lime oils (not juice) are a large part of Coke's flavoring. They don't affect its acidity.
Both Mexican and American coke are excellent for cleaning stains off your driveway, I have used both successfully.
When did Mexico was excluded from America? I always thought it's right in the middle of it.
No you don't.
@@Incomudro1963ever tried? They both work well. Until you’ve tried it don’t knock it. We drink cleaners daily
@@Incomudro1963 your right, I’ve never used Mexican coke. In all seriousness though, I’ve used coke several times to clean oil stains and discoloration from concrete and it really works, much better than any commercial product designed to clean it.
The phosphoric acid is doing all the work. If you really must use soda to get your acid, at least use diet so it doesn't leave a sugary residue.
I'm not a chemist but as soon as you said something else was going on, I immediately wondered what the acid was doing to the sucrose. Who says that one semester of chemistry didn't pay off?? 😂
I feel like he teed up the phosphoric acid when going through his ingredients. My science brain alerted because acids and sugars love to get they freak on, and my filmmaking brain alerted at the Chekhov's Gun.
I've known about sucrose and invert sugar for years, so I figured it out pretty early in the video... but for some reason it never occurred to me (before this video) that that would happen in sucrose-sweetened cola!
I failed chemistry and even I thought that there could be some chemical reaction going on that breaks down the sucrose.
The people who wrote that original paper should be thoroughly embarrassed.
I used to be a beekeeper, and I’d invert sucrose for overwintering bees by boiling it with some vinegar. The resulting fructose and glucose are more easily digestible by the bees. As soon as you mentioned adding the acid to the mix, I knew what result you were going to get and why. Chemistry is so interesting!
It’s so crazy that you did this video, I’m 53 years old and I’m a Mexican. And I’ve been loving Mexican Coke forever. But these last several years, I started telling myself if I could even taste the difference anymore. I thought it was just me getting older or something. Because I really couldn’t tell the difference and Mexico is way more expensive over here in my city.So this video definitely helped me out a lot. I’m not spending that crazy money for Mexican Coke anymore.
You didn’t watch the whole video did you
@@NotApplicable1123 Why don't you tell him why
There's a difference, but if you can't tell anymore then it's not worth it to spend more.
Did they start putting the old amount of sugar back into their coke? Amlo had made it to where coke in Mexico was mostly artificial sweeteners due to covid co-morbidities. Only reason I noticed was around that time I visited Mexico and got a "regular" coke but it tasted like diet coke. I looked it up and Amlo had made a big push to remove a lot of sugar from soda.
@@Carguyforlife yeah! Bc all the legislation about excessive amount of sugar, fat, sodium, fat, etc on some products, some special black hexagonal labels were placed on the packages.. it helped bc the food companies started to reformulate the products, they contain less sugar and so on.I still think the coca is so sweet for me lol..
Entry 50 in the “johnny harris is wrong” genre
Johnny is fake news
He is heavily bias and does not do the same research as someone like Coffeezilla
He does lots of good work. There are so many way worse content creators.
@@Robespierre-lI This is a pattern of behavior. Johnny Harris is a well established disinformation agent and even when he isn't literally being paid to lie he gets things wrong constantly.
@@Thousandpointsoflight after watching his Pathetic episode where he desperately trying to sell me some copy paste Atlantis map I cannot take him seriously! 😂😂😂
I have a friend that drinks lots of Coke. I had him do blind test a few times each of canned, plastic bottle, US 8oz glass bottle, Mexican 12oz glass bottle, and fountain from McDonalds. The only two he couldn't consistently identify correctly were between the two glass bottles. He always picked the glass as the better taste but could not always pick which was Mexican and which was U.S. It was not a huge amount of samples and not 100% scientifically proper testing, but it did lean toward the glass being the major component in the effect on flavor.
McDonald’s has the best brix according to my husband. He worked in the restaurant business for 28 years. He says McD pays Coke to monitor their soda/syrup ratio- brix. Most other places water down their sodas.
Interesting, I can always taste the flavor of the can.
The can and the plastic bottle are the same. Cans are lined with a very thin BPA (plastic) liner to avoid the drink from eating through the aluminum. So ultimately it's still just in a plastic container.
Fun test, have your friends blind taste test Coke vs Pepsi. I pissed off my friends by proving they couldn't accurately pick one from the other reliably. It was also done as a double blind study by scientists a while back, and they also proved that since they are basically the same, the vast majority of purple can't tell the difference
I'm ancient and grew up on glass bottle Coca-Cola. When cans of coke became a thing, I tried a few and absolutely couldn't stand the taste. There is some awful metallic note in the taste. Plastic bottle coke has its own off notes (generally seeming a little flat to me) but at least it doesn't have the metallic taste. I can tolerate it, but don't like it.
I've has Mexican bottled coke a few times when visiting Mexico long ago, and it tasted like Coke to me. I didn't have any way to do an A/B test so I can't say they were _exactly_ the same, but they were at least real close. Of course, this was long enough ago US Coke may still have been using sugar.
These days I pretty much only drink coke from a fountain when I'm eating out. It is much superior (imho) to plastic bottles or (yuck!) cans. (And don't even get me started on the taste of diet coke. Double-yuck!)
I used to drink a lot of coke and I guarantee you I could tell you if it came out of a can or a bottle. And at this point the only thing I find really great is the Mexican Coke. But it's also not just the flavor. It's a texture in the liquid if that makes sense.
Mexican here, the sweetener was changed to high fructose in like 2006? The flavor difference is 100% the water used at the bottling plant. Cool video
Oh just remembered something. I read that only the coca cola exported to the USA is sweetened with sugar
Yes. The coke changed flavor quite radically from that sweetener change.
yup. It stopped tasting good more than a decade ago. I still kept drinking it for a few years until I finally gave up once I accepted the taste was never coming back. Now it tastes more acid, kinda salty, almost like plain carbonated water. It doesn't really have that sweetness it used to have and it's not dependent of the kind of bottle it comes from, though my brain would still prefer can > glass > plastic if I had to choose.
Yes I have heard that too. The coke sold in mexico doesn't use real sugar, it uses high fructose corn syrup. Only the coke made for expot to the U.S.A. contains cane sugar . @@captainofiron
@@ChowOne "real sugar" What do you think fructose and glucose are?
Sucrose is a disacchride composed fructose and glucose. In acidic media sucrose is decomposed into glucose and fructose. This reaction has been well known for more than 100 years. The paper authors that indicate that sucrose is hydrolyzed are correct.
It's "disaccharide". Task failed successfully. You're excused..
@@johnd5398 so you basically discounted the entire statement because they missed an "a"? get off the internet. the statement is correct, it's a simple type-o.
I believe I even mentioned sugar inversion on Johnny Harris's video.
Chemical engineer in food industry. Inversion is super common, since acidifying is one of the most common and effective ways to preserve foods.
@@abmoore06 I get all this, but the general public has this idea that HFCS is bad for you and cane sugar is not as bad. If the inversion takes place and break down the sucrose into fructose and glucose, is it functionally any different? How much of a difference in the ratio?
Sucrose inversion was the first thing that occurred to me, but for the wrong reason. The Benedicts test uses a boiling water bath, and heating a sucrose-water solution is a guaranteed way to also produce inverted sucrose. But in retrospect, he acid component seem like the real smoking gun (but I still wish you had done the Benedicts test on a sucrose+water solution too :) )
Benedict's reagent is alkaline (to precipitate the cuprous oxide), so there's no significant inversion going on during the test.
@@jpdemer5 I believe @davidrinker1614 was postulating that a sucrose inversion could occur from the heat of the boiling water bath, versus of the ph of the reagent.
@@jpdemer5 great to know but performing the test would still be the obvious negative control
@@jpdemer5 yeah, would have been cool to see the benedict's test work out to show no fruc/glucos in a water-sucros sample. Just to show both possible outcomes from the benedict's test. But, it's not central to the issue at hand, so leaving it out makes sense too.
Heating is also relevant as the bottle coke is pasteurized to sterilize it. I suspect even a fresh off the line Mexican coke will have large amounts of fructose and glucose in it.
As is SOOoo often the case, the answer to what people believe is a "simple question" appears to be more complicated and not at all what the "Yes-OR-No crowd" are interested in hearing...
So thanks for taking the time and effort of actually looking into this question to further and showing that this "rabbit hole" did exist but it went in a totally "other directions" than many(most?) people seemingly believed.
Best regards.
Johnny Harris is wrong about a lot of stuff. That’s the issue when journalists try to talk about just about everything even tough they have zero education in science
Zero education period, adding the science part isn't even necessary.
But he does rely on actual experts as a basis for his videos. Unfortunately with science it's easy enough for even scientists to get it wrong. In this case he relied on a published paper without digging deep enough to find the refutation of said paper by other scientists. I think that's an easy mistake as in this case there was a paper that was still being referenced that agreed with the premise. No need to keep looking.
I don't even see him as a journalist. He's a content creator and media personality whose brand is that he's a journalist.
He is for from a journalists, he is a an activist who acts like a journalists to spread his shit seeds around the world
@@nanoflower1 This is not a case of relying on experts - it is an example of parroting nonsense due to Dunning-Kruger effect and confirmation bias.
Also, so called "experts" clearly lack elementary understanding of chemistry they're supposedly experts on. FFS how can you miss hydrolysis of sucrose?
I did Mexican coke in the 90s. It was legit.
I did Peruvian Coke in the 80s.
@@Tmanaz480Columbian coke is really the best
🔥
@@manuelferreira4345 🥄 You dropped this fam.
I did a Mexican.
As a Mexican who lives in both countries, I can say that some of us were able to tell that coca cola company has been changing the flavor of this soda in 🇲🇽. The flavor is turning little by little to the American flavor, and I guess that's their way to make the transition "so we don't notice" from cane sugar to high fructose. So yes, Mexican coca cola taste has been changing little by little throughout the years (its my opinion and I could be wrong)
💯💯 as a long time purchaser of Mexican Coke in the states... especially within like idk ~5-7yrs ago it's become basically the same taste as American Coke. I still buy it sometimes for the glass bottle. But I swear it used to taste more different!!!! -- it's really got me questioning my sanity 😅 -- but I agree you! I think they changed it over time. Wouldn't be the first time Coca-Cola pulled a sneaky move like that 😔
100 % right
The Mexican orange Fanta taste nasty now.
Mexican government passed a law that imposed a tax on all beverages sweetened with sugar. So hence coca cola and other companies in Mexico moved away from sugar cane as the sweetener. So yes, it's flavor now it's just the same as American cola
No es por eso compatriota es por los sellitos de la 4T por eso han estado cambiando la formulación.
What an interesting investigation! I also recently learned that honey is very similar to high fructose corn syrup in terms of fructose-glucose ratio. Sugar chemistry is not widely understood, considering how common it is in diet. Thanks for making this video.
I thought honey was mostly glucose.
It's really well understood but suppressed by the sugar the industry
@@louistournas120 nope, otherwise honey would be far far less sweet than it is. As always, the big issue is how much total sugars we're ingesting in our diets. Wayyyy down on the list is what form it takes. As long as it contains a significant amount of fructose, it's going to be noticeably worse for your health than pure glocuse based products. HFCS being an easy to work with syrup just made it even easier and cheaper for many American processed food companies to inject it into all kinds of products, than cane sugar.
@ivolol so in reality sucrose is likely worse than hfcs, you're still consuming around 50% fructose in both cases, but it's sweetness is diminished in sucrose so you're consuming more overall with the sucrose (10 to 25% more according to the joogle).
@@xxportalxx. It is my understanding that HFCS actually contains a higher than 55% fructose. The sweetness is a factor. Glucose tastes less sweet than fructose. If you use fructose, you can use less and the product becomes cheaper. So, sucrose comes out more expensive because you need more of it, even though it is a disacarride. In our body, it gets catalyzed to glucose and fructose (monosacarrides).
I think corn syrup is pure glucose, so they use an enzyme to convert some of it to fructose. That way, they can use less, thus it reduces the price.
As for health, fructose is a problem. Also, they add these sugars to ketchup and everything and they talk about reducing fat intake to lose weight and be healthy. They didn’t talk about reducing sugars in the 80s to be healthy.
7:55 I’m very impressed by your ability to pour corn syrup into that flask
9:12 Maybe the difference in taste is due to the amount of sodium, which does affect the perception of tastes, including sweetness
It's a big difference in sodium, so that could be all there is to it, although I assume there are other differences between the two, as well. We've also got a video on how salt affects other flavors, the short version is it's complicated:
th-cam.com/video/dWatMuHZIxE/w-d-xo.html
If it is *only* the salt, one way to test this would be to add the right amount of salt to HFCS Coke. Although when it comes to anything taste-related, the exact process and order of operations can alter the flavor in a way you can't check for with simple chemical tests.
I still think we CAN taste a diff btwn sugar that has been broken down into glucose and fructose, and HFCS; as the ratios differ, and some folk can tell that diff alone i feel, even if these had the same sodium lvls (in fact, id bet the flavour is more noticeably diff with the same sodium lvls; as the sodium lvls have to be adjusted to compensate for the exact flavour of the drink - if ya leave it the same, one coke will taste wrong bcuz its not salty enuf and too sweet; just bcuz these sugars taste diff)
@@ACSReactions I rly do think there is a diff btwn the taste of sugar broken down into a 50/50 mix and HFCS, as you pt out the ratios differ - in fact, the salt lvl bein diff further lends credibility to this; bcuz theyre adjustin the salt lvl to compensate for the diffs in flavour caused by the diffs in sugar used
If they didnt adjust the salt lvl, the mexican coke wud taste undersalty and less like coke; distinctly less i believe, hence why they add the extra salt - its almost def to compensate for flavour diffs in the sugar concentrations
It's the glass bottle. Being Christmas time, Coke likes to put out small glass bottles usually with their iconic Santa on the label (it's US coke with corn syrup). Buy some, chill and drink. Delicious glass bottle coke.
Inverting sucrose was one of the lab experiments I did in college way back in the 1970’s. We used chloroacetic acid instead of phosphoric and monitored the reaction by both rotation of polarized light, the classic method from which the term inversion originates, and by NMR, way more modern. Chloroacetic acid got the job done in a couple of hours. Weak phosphoric is undoubtably slower, but Mexican Coke can sit in a bottle for weeks or months, easily before it gets to a consumer. An undergrad with access to an NMR could probably do a follow-up experiment to find the rate of reaction.
Inversion rate of sucrose in cola-type soft drinks has been looked into many times before. One of the more recent paper I have found is Monsivais,Perrigue and Drewnowski. "Sugars and satiety: does the type of sweetener make a difference?." The American journal of clinical nutrition 86, no. 1 (2007): 116-123. In short, 50% of sucrose would have hydrolysed 10 days after bottling and only around 5% of sucrose remains 1 year later.
Chloroacetic acid seems super exotic to use for something like this. Any reason in particular this acid was chosen?
@ It was 50 years ago and I don’t recall the reason. I can’t explain why I recall the acid and not the reason for its use. Memory and forgetting are odd that way. It may have been simply to have a lab experiment that could complete in a couple hours and it also may have been, in the NMR version of the experiment, to have an acid that wouldn’t interfere with the NMR peak we needed to measure. The professor was quite bright and knowledgeable, so I’m sure he had a good reason for that choice.
@@SsuperNnova Maybe it gives a reaction rate that's convenient for a student lab experiment? Not so fast that there's no time to take a series of measurements (there might be just one polarimeter in the classroom), and not so slow that it takes hours to get results.
I'm glad we got you here on TH-cam still kicking around and with awesome memory, sharing your experiences with us - thanks!
I was screaming invertion for the first half of the video. Soft drinks manufacturers have continuous monitoring of the sugar content (It's probably an indirect measure, but they have a number related to sugar content to target) of drinks going into the bottler/canner to ensure that they're mixing the syrup and additional water in correct ratios. At a certain point in production, the readings all change because the sugar has inverted, so they then compare to a second target value.
Was yelling sucrose inversion the moment the glucose meter was going off
As a home brewer that makes a fruit wine (fermented lemonade with other fruits), I use table sugar for fermentation, but the yeast metabolism for fructose vs sucrose is different. This will cause a more cider taste due to the byproducts of the different metabolic steps the yeast is taking. So, I have been inverting table sugar with acid and heat for years. Since my base is lemon juice, that is the acid I use to invert the sugar. I suspected inversion of the sugar molecules was what was happening here, with both carbonic acid and phosphoric acid in the solution - it is quite literally only a matter of time for it to occur.
I think they recently changed the formula. Before sugar taxes and warning labels in Mexico, many products had to change recipes. Coke labels used to say 'excess sugars' and 'excess calories,' but now some also say 'contains sweeteners.' Supposedly, the regular and smaller cans are still made only with sugar.
These days in the USA sucrose is as likely to be beet as cane sugar.. The same tariff that favors corn syrup over cane also made domestically produced beet sugar competitive. I hadn't realized this until Jerry Hickey pointed it out on the radio a few years ago. Until then beet sugar had been just a specialized niche product, but now it's about half the country's sucrose.
You're thinking of Europe. Most of our sugar still comes from the old cane plantations in Florida, the Caribbean and Hawaii. In the PACNW you may find some beet sugar. They grow the beats in Idaho.
The sugar beet factory in Nampa stinks and during harvest time there's sugar beets and onions all over the roads.@@SaanMigwell
Michigan Sugar Company produces over 1.3 billion pounds of sugar each year, making it the third largest beet sugar processor in the United States, sold under the Pioneer Sugar brand. I drive past one of their factories in Croswell to visit relatives down state.
@@SaanMigwell Nope. Sorry. Beets are grown in a lot of areas. Beets are also comparable to wheat, corn, and soy for being sprayed with glyphosates and being GMO's. Beets USED to be healthy but no longer.
Sugar beets grow better in more climates native to the US.
2:00 ... but... when you heat sucrose it can decompose into its monomers, glucose and fructose. (still mid watch, just placing a bet on this being why)
You’re not far off!!
@@ACSReactions Ahhh the acid! that makes so much sense, and means it happens even if the coke is kept cool.
I owned a store for years and can tell you that when the sodas come off that truck in the summer they are very hot... Damn near boiling..
If you were a kid in the 80's, you will be able to taste the difference. At that time, ALL sodas that were not Diet were made with sucrose. I can't drink a high fructose corn syrup soda because it has an aftertaste to me and doesn't taste like a pure sweetness. If I do drink a soda, it is a Mexican coke.
I agree with you 100%! I can definitely tell the difference. There is a definite after taste with the American Coke. Mexican Coke tastes more like I remember it tasting back in the 80's before they started messing with it.
Coca Cola has been HFCS since the early 1980s (I want to say 1981).
@@silicon212 Depends on where you were. Not all bottlers switched at the same time.
Fun fact: corn syrup is cheaper than cane sugar in the US because of tariffs on sugar imports, and gov't subsidies for corn farmers. Don't expect _that_ to change any time soon!
Its driven our candy industry to either move over to corn syrup or to move to Canada and maybe Mexico too.
As the climate continues to change, how will our crops change?
@@AtomicBuffalo More CO2 = more crops, taller crops, heavier crops, etc.
Typically, the US does produce sugar from beets. It has to compete with cane sugar from abroad. Growing corn for HFCS is ideal.
Extended droughts mean no crops, certainly not taller and heavier ones.
It’s…it’s almost like TH-cam pays the same money for lies as it does for truthful content. Someone should do a video about this…
this is featured in every TH-cam video in existence.
So, if I want to avoid high fructose corn syrup, I should drink cane sugar drinks, but only if they aren't expired?
I'd be surprised if any pop on a store shelf sweetened with cane sugar isn't fully inverted. You don't want it to remain sucrose because of solubility and the syrup will almost certainly be heated at some point in mixing/bottling for sanitary reasons.
Also, I'm surprised that there was any question about this in the first place since it is pretty common chemistry. We covered it at the local community college 20 plus years ago. Anyone writing an academic paper about food chemistry in the last century should have already known this.
It's covered because he gets TH-cam views and makes a lot of money from people like us.
Try the one that's actually sold in mexico. The mexican coke they sell here is different
I heard the Mexican coke in Mexico doesn't use sucrose anymore, but sucralose
Every time I hear Americans talking about how we use only sugar I'm like "What are you talking about?", I went to get one but funny XD glass bottles have no information since they are for return and the ingredients can change. Anyway, a Coke here has some sugars (fructose and sugar) but sucralose is labeled as another ingredient. Laws put a lot of taxes on trying to get healthier drinks, which is why we don't use only sugar anymore, they need to keep down the calories.
In Mexico Coke doesn’t contains sugar.
Maybe, maybe some tiny bottle edition of Fanta and Coke. But is an exception.
He’s misinforming.
Hi, I randomly stumbled upon your video, and since I coincidentally have a Mexican coke in my hand i'm sharing you what the ingredients are shown in Mexico for your reference:
Regular Coke
Carbonated water, Added sugars (high fructose syrup and sugar), Class IV caramel, Phosphoric acid, Flavourings, Sucralose (4.4 mg/100 g) and Caffeine
SODIUM 10mg / 100ml
For me it's always been the aftertaste of HFCS. The "Real" sugar ones seem to be a flavor punch, and then nothing, where the American version seems to stick around longer. Now I'm off to get a volunteer for a blind test. ha
You’re not tasting the HFCS as an aftertaste. It’s the plastic of the bottle or the lining of the can being eaten away (in small amounts) by the acidity of the coke. Mexican coke is always (at least in the us) in glass, which doesn’t react. Get an American Coke in the glass bottles.
@@dragonkyng You're making assumptions. I prefer Coke from glass, and can still taste a difference between HFCS in glass, and real sugar in glass.
I've even tasted several of the real sugar Pepsi ones in aluminum, and I swear I can detect the aftertaste of HFCS. Even with my tendency to have nocebo reactions, I still taste a difference.
But like the video pointed out maybe the sodium content is making me think differently. Blind tests are needed.
@@bluecrownvic wouldn't your tendency to have nocebo reactions also mean you're more likely to have placebo reactions?
@ it’s not an assumption, I did this test in high school for a science final.
@@bluecrownvicaluminum soda cans have a plastic lining
Shout out to Flinn Scientific for slowly becoming the monopoly supplier for all US schools. Also 8:25 nice but anxiety inducing pour.
Man, I never thought I’d see such an enjoyable geeked out presentation on the science of my favorite soda. Your video is easy to understand and follow. A title that isn’t just click bait, the engaging delivery on the way you authored the subject matter, as well as the crisp editing all have a highly professional and polished feel. First visit to your feed, keep up the good work👍🏽. Subscribed
We did this experiment in high school! If only we had filmed it on a camcorder or something!
I'm Mexican and I can say Coke now tastes different than when I was a kid (I'm 49 now). I don't know the dates accurately but I remember in the late 90s or early 2000's the government passed an act to eliminate cane sugar from beverages because -they said- it was the main reason for the concerning increase in diabetes cases in the country. I remember also that some politicians said the real reason was because Mexico had agreed to buy HFCS from the US and used the diabetes as a pretext. In the following years Coca Cola started replacing cane sugar with HFCS and we GenXers started noticing a change in flavor.
Flavor difference in glass/PET bottles has nothing to do with the sweetener, be it HFCS or sugar, but with the bottle itself. It was discovered that PET releases aldehydes into the beverages when exposed to solar light. And I haven't seen a light-proof Coca Cola transport vehicle yet. Also, some vendors put the bottles outdoors when selling their merchandise, like street food. Glass is inert so the flavor does not change as in PET bottles.
> And I haven't seen a light-proof Coca Cola transport vehicle yet
I yet to see a non-light-proof transport vehicle yet.. Not saying the bottles isn't exposed to some light, but surly it doesn't happen inside the transport vehicle..
Great content, clear presentation, nice vibe.
Best change the title to Coca Cola, you got all the cocaine heads worried.
He did that on purpose.
I'm confused: isn't sucrose = glucose + fructose?
Yes, sucrose is essentially a fructose and glucose molecule bonded together. Both of those monosaccharides (fructose and glucose) exist in both a ring form and a straight chain form, and it's the straight chain form that has a carbonyl group and can react with Benedict's test. But once they're bonded together into sucrose, both are locked into their ring forms with no carbonyl groups and no ability to react with Benedict's solution. If you break that bond with H+ then you're left with regular old fructose and glucose.
@@ACSReactions Thanks for the answer. My confusion comes from (transcript):
------
I tracked down that study 'cause I was curious
0:13
and I confirmed that yes, the authors found zero grams
of sucrose in a bottle of Mexican Coke.
Now cane sugar, which is what Mexican Coke claims
to be sweetened with, it is the whole point
of Mexican Coke, is just sucrose.
High fructose corn syrup, on the other hand is a mixture
0:29
of fructose and glucose.
------
I think this needs to be expanded on since it's really confusing what you're testing since, for me (and my limited knowledge of this) it looks like from your comment on HFCS that - to me - it's the "same" as sucrose. What is the difference between glucose + fructose of sucrose and HFCS? Again, thanks for your response and these are some of my favourite videos.
HFCS contains free glucose and fructose, which are both monosaccharides. Cane sugar contains only sucrose, which is a different molecule formed by a chemical bond between a fructose molecule and a glucose molecule. Think of it like this: if fructose and glucose were hydrogen and oxygen, then sucrose would be water. Technically water is made of hydrogen and oxygen, but there's a big difference between a bottle of water and a bottle of separated hydrogen and oxygen. (Ok, water is 2 hydrogens and 1 oxygen, whereas sucrose is 1 fructose and 1 glucose, but you get the idea, right?)
@@ACSReactions Got it. I guess a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Chemistry is wild. Organic chemistry even wilder. Thank you!
Table sugar is 50 percent glucose and 50 percent sucrose. HFCS is 40 percent glucose and 60 percent fructose
Bang!!! No more mystery!!! For almost 20 years I asked myself why Coca-Cola taste (canned, glass bottle or PET, doesn't matter) uses to change (for worse) after 30 to 45 days from labeled production date. Here in Brazil our Coca-Cola is sweetened with sugarcane 😎
Coke in Mexico does use real sugar! I’ve personally toured the coke bottling plant in Tijuana. I’ve seen it with my owns eyes so.
Authors of study didn't take into account succrose converts into glucose in an acidic environment
I can't believe Johnny Harris was WRONG /s
Excellent video. Good illustration of the need to know the basic chemistry of the stuff you're measuring before you can rely on the measurements you make. Thanks for sharing.
What you need go test is ratio of the two sugars. It one of sugars that we usually associate with sweetness. Overall good job explaining the hydrolysis of sugar but needs to go to ratio.
The curious part is that this is a common lesson in biology 1 in college. At the same time, I have preferred Mexican coke for a long time because, to me, it has a more "balanced" flavor. This is more evident when the coke is slightly warmer than you might prefer it to be. The extra salt explains this brilliantly, far better than attributing it to cane sugar.
Johnny Harris fell ass backwards in to the truth
Nice experiment. It refreshing to see someone run out all of their options and data sources before they make a final statement!!!
Mexican coke sure taste better.....more refreashing. Wonder about the acid level. Acids in drinks will give a more refreshing feel.
That's what I call REAL science baby!
It's the real thing.
This was really interesting and the first video I've seen of yours! One thing I want to point out where you stated that people can't taste the difference of HFCS and Came Sugar drinks. You're only partially correct. There's a medication called Topamax (Topiramate) and it messes with your brain chemistry really bad for sense of taste for soda. In some people myself included there is a side effect where HFCS tastes absolutely HORRENDOUS. I can't drink American sodas but a European soda I can drink no problem minus the weird carbonation side effect. Food for thought. Lots of people take Topamax for Migrations and it's used for epilepsy and a few other things as well.
This video helped me understand why some Mexican Cokes taste good and some taste bad. I assumed it was the phosphoric acid and turns out I'm wrong.
Whoa this is fascinating, I’ll look into this more!
Biochemistry 101! And yes I've done blind taste tests where they were astonished that I could tell the difference between Coke, Pepsi, RC, double cola, And I might add that sugar, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, stevia, sucralose, aliolos, monk fruit, saccharin, nutra sweet and others all taste distinctly different and unlike each other. Honey which should never be heated to boiling tastes good in tea but is nasty and coffee. Rosewater on the other hand is good in coffee but nasty in tea. Don't even think about putting rose water in your coke.
I'm not familiar with RC or double cola, but I believe that anyone can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi. They are sooo different.
I don’t see how people can’t tell the difference. All those sodas taste entirely different.
Maple syrup is good in coffee. One wouldn't imagine so, but surprisingly it is. I got the idea from a long-defunct brand of ice cream which only used maple syrup and its coffee ice cream was yum.
Honey is good in coffee IMO
Pepsi and Coke have pretty distinct tastes, Coke is sweeter and Pepsi has its own unique aftertaste to it
Sucrose is a combination of fructose and glucose connected by a glycosidic bond. That bond is surprisingly fragile and can result in the two constituents existing separately. What can break this bond? Well, for one thing ... phosphoric acid. Sorry, I didn't watch the video before commenting.
Does carbonic acid? Sorry. I'm not finishing the video.
Neat video!
Curiously, at the video outset my first thought was: I bet the sucrose splits into its component sugars, glucose and fructose, once it's mixed in the pop. I was unaware of the publicational dispute going on in the background until you displayed it here. Thanks for that.
The Coca-Cola Company USED TO claim it made all its syrup for all markets worldwide in Atlanta, and distributed it from there, so that the product is exactly the same no matter where you buy it. That was all over the TV at one time many years ago. Is that no longer a claim they make? Or might something like sodium content be a matter of the local water used (or possibly balancing that local water for pH or some other characteristic) to hydrate the syrup at the local bottling facilities worldwide?
My sons and I can detect Mexican vs American Coke 100% of the time. We don't claim which is which, merely that out of 3 cups of the two, we can identify which one is different. At least for me that's not about sweetness. The carbonation is slightly different, and I want to say the texture(??) is slightly different.
I didn't know this was a controversy before I found it debunked, so... yeah.
Cool science but I can 100% taste a difference between cane sugar and corn syrup in soda 👍
I seem to have more tummy trouble when I have soda with high fructose. I definitely have problems with fountain soda over canned
4:44 best joke in the video, it’s so unlike a company to lie to us LMAO
@3:50 ...are you about to make homeopathic Mexican Coke?
I have no memory of a better joke
Cures diabetes 😂
This is very interesting. Although this is just my personal experience, I could taste the difference between Dr Pepper in Australia and Dr Pepper in the US. I discovered this completely by accident. When I lived in Australia, I noticed they started importing my favorite soda and immediately bought some. I was completely taken aback when it tasted very different than the Dr Pepper I had the in US (uses corn syrup). It tasted like Dr Pepper bottled in Dublin Texas, which was the only bottler in the US that used cane sugar (although they are no longer around due to the Dublin bottler breaking their contract with Dr Pepper corporate, which is an interesting story on its own). I did not keep a bottle of Aussie Dr Pepper so I have no label to compare but they did taste difference and the only obvious thing on the bottle was cane sugar vs. corn syrup. It wouldn't hold up in a court of law but interesting none the less. Thanks for the work you did on this.
The even funnier thing is expecting to be “helthier”(misspelled for a reason) by just changing from high fructose corn syrup to sugar, in a carbonated drink that also has other components that aren’t great for your health either. Sugar in and of itself is in very high amounts in a lot of foods and most normal people don’t need the levels they are getting in all the processed foods. The idea that Mexican coke is better in multiple ways compared to American can coke is a very ingenious marketing scheme. As with a lot of other brands, often times what you are really buying is the packaging and the theme that is publicized behind the product.
Which other components aren't great for humann health? Phosphoric acid?
@ several depending on what studies or doctors/nutritionists you decide to believe the validity of. It can go either way though. But that could also mean none of them are unhealthy if you don’t believe any of the negative ones. As with many things related to the human element of error, opinion, hidden motives, and the cult of personality of perceived facts, the only statement anyone can agree on is to disagree.
As much as humans like to think they are a bastion of truth and transparency, often times health studies have just as much to do with politics as they do legitimate health risks. Take things with a grain of salt.
But I’ve found from what I’ve looked into with the ingredients of coke and other sodas, the synthetic food coloring, the umbrella term known as “artificial flavors” and “natural flavorings” being the catch all term that it is, and the shady business practices multi-billion dollar soda companies make, and the environmental impact of those industries, there’s more to things than just switching high fructose to sugar to make something healthy. I highly doubt any doctor would tell you to drink coke on a regular basis even if it did contain table sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. Yeah it makes a mild difference if any, as the video shows.
Everything in moderation is fine. You will not live longer by avoiding eating ice cream your entire life (as long as it's in moderation). Cane sugar is a little better than high fructose health wise, but still not totally better.
5:34: I'm at this point. My guess would be that the phosphoric acid in the cola might have split the sucrose.
As someone who has done quite of bit of research into fueling for endurance training I was a bit confused watching this initially. It's well understood within the research on fueling that sucrose is made up of a 1:1 ratio of glucose and fructose and breaks down as such in the body. And HFCS 42 has less glucose so I wasn't suprised that your results showed high or higher levels of glucose in the Mexican coke. Makes sense especially if it is broken down in the bottle.
The articles I just read say that HFCS 55 is more commonly what's used in carbonated drinks.
Purely anecdotal comment: I live in México on the border with the U.S., cross frequently and have drank both versions of cocacola throughout my life; have always preferred Mexican bc smt about the flavor, idk. However, around 5ish yrs ago, I noticed Mexican coke tasting different, like it's got artificial sweeteners, at least partially, bc I get the artificial sweetener aftertaste, which I don't like (main reason I'd rather just drink water than diet/zero sugar versions of any soda).
I no longer drink Mexican coke bc of this and I stopped drinking the American version bc it tastes like watered down soda, so... thanks CocaCola for turning me away from coke, ig ? Anyways, my point was, bc of this recent change (I suspect) the taste of both is now kinda similar. Mexican coke has been gone (for me) for a while and doing taste tests seems pointless.
But good to know about the conversion of sugars in acidic environments ! Nice video.
Have also started tasting the artificial sugars in the plastic bottles and canned versions of "original" coke but had a glass bottled one today and it didn't have the artificial sugar taste (also 7 pesos cheaper goddamn)
@@Brian-tn4cd I rarely drink glass, so my experience there is limited, but it is a sort of common knowledge amongst ppl that glass tastes better. Between plastic and can, I usually prefer can but I'm not sure why, kinda feel it's psychollogical, but I have heard ppl assume it's bc the plastic inevitably sheds off particles and slightly changes the flavor or smt, which kinda makes sense but idk if that's actually happening. Maybe glass is the material that transforms the flavor the least ?
I dont know, Mexican coke tastes mules better than American coke. I dont think it's the sugar though.
Probably because it's in glass.
you mean burros better?
And a bit more salt @@weiss27md
@@weiss27md But we currently consume it in platic bottles nowadays, it still tastes different.
Like for me american Coke tastes like mexican Pepsi.
@@ACSMEX I think it's some bot that keeps commenting that it's probably because of the bottle. Nothing scientific about "probably".
I live in México, and Coke added high fructose corn syrup a few years ago. It tastes way different than what it did before for sure. there were comercial talking about the change in ingredients.
Non-chemists shouldn't do chemical analysis on TH-cam.
What really gave it away to me IMMEDITELY, was the ratio of Fructose to glucose in the table. Nearly 50:50.
Even high school chem should have taught this to Johnny.
TH-cam: caveat emptor. Don't just blindly believe what 'yodels' post.
Everyone is an expert in TH-camland.
Just like when you pay extra for Himalayan rock salt
Which, I might add, is not Himalayan.
There's less processing and additives (they add an anti caking agent to avoid clumps)
So is the cane sugar version any better for you since it breaks down into the same molecule?
Is there anything Johnny Harris hasn't lied about? I'm beginning to wonder what that would be...
It's not so much lies... his channel has a strong focus on Johnny Harris telling stories all by himself, and much like any human he has a lot of blind spots.
His channel is higher quality than most mainstream journalism, but he would benefit from consulting unbiased experts/scientists more often.
I'm a mexican living in México drinking a bottle coke while watching this. Estos gringos y sus ocurrencias 😝
Ja ja ja😂
In Mexico youve got to be careful. All bottles of coke had sucralosa (Splenda) in them except the refillable/returnable ones. Not sure why so many Mexican drinks have sucralosa in them.
I'm reminded of an Adam Ragusea video on High Fructose Corn Syrup as well -- in which he explained that there may still be a difference between these two drinks for your body. (Or for some people's). He even mentioned how sucrose can generally break down into Glucose and Sucrose, but specifically (as you mentioned) only at an exactly 50-50 ratio, and in nature this means that we generally only find glucose-sucrose in ratios like this, or with lower fructose - there's /very/ few foods that have "more fructose than glucose" there's plenty with near even splits or "more glucose than fructose". And this is important because our bodies generally need glucose in order to be able to fully process fructose. And in /some/ portion of the population it's believed that excess fructose isn't handled as well as in others, leading to things like heightened blood pressure or some other generic symptoms because their body isn't properly disposing of or processing the excess fructose. (IIRC the science on all this was very limited and not fully understood).
TLDR "HFCS has more Froctose (in ratio to glucose) than most natural foods, normally that's not an issue, but for some people it may cause problems if their body doesn't know what to do with it"
I was there a thousand years ago (in the 80's) when Coke & Pepsi changed their formulas and made the switch to HFCS. Around that time, I started to experience digestive issues - gas, irregular BM's, etc. I couldn't tie the symptoms to anything until an allergist made an offhand observation that it might be fructose intolerance. So I did a dietary challenge, which isn't easy because the stuff is EVERYWHERE. The better I got at avoiding HFCS, the fewer bouts I experienced. What really surprised me was that the nasty incidences of acid reflux that had been getting progressively worse for over a decade suddenly ceased.
Anyway, I've been treating myself to Mexican Coke (because it is 'safe') without any issues ... but only once or twice a week, which implies that I have been consuming it at a rate that is still within my system's ability to process it.
... and now I know that. So, thank you!
Whaaaaat? Johnny CIA is wrong about something?!?!!!! Aint no way.
Found the Hasanabi head :D
That was exactly the first thing I thought of when you tested high on your homemade coke. My first thought was that the alcohol in the flavor mixed with the low PH could have caused the sugars to breakdown.
There is a huge difference in taste. Your video shows this.
That's what I thought too. A majority were able to pick the Mexican coke correctly but at the end he said if you think you can taste the difference you're wrong.
I absolutely can. I live on the border and cross frequently, there is a difference. Not just in taste, in texture too, it's less syrupy.
@enlamainyokohama He said if you can tell the difference between the sweetener specifically then you are probably wrong. He acknowledged that some other aspects of the composition (such as sodium) are different
Wait what?! So everyone telling me that cane sugar soda is healthier than HFCS soda was simply talking out of their behinds?
All things food research is a minefield for lay people. Unfathomable quantities of money + several decades of a sustained regulatory capture effort have left us with a study that will tell you every possible verdict for every food. (Ex: steak is bad for your heart, steak is good for your heart).
So, really any time you hear any non-expert (and I mean, they have a degree and a license and are an active peer-reviewed researcher you’re confident aren’t in the direct employ of a food conglomerate), be a little wary.
It’s not that they’re tying to deceive you, just that our information sphere on it is poisoned.
Anyway, afaik, and as of a policy review project I did for work 6 months ago: our pancreas doesn’t really care what form of sugar goes into something. It still has to deal with keeping our blood at the right glucose levels.
Our brain, however, does care. (As, most likely does our stomach, as the emerging research around neurons in the stomach and how they interact with satiation & addiction that Ozempic is spearheading). HFCS as the base ingredient seems to generally be better at setting up addiction and more likely to fail to satiate you (so you’ll drink more of it than otherwise).
But, ultimately, it mostly matters what your total sugar intake is over a day/week/month, and what your total calories in vs burnt is. Anything that you become addicted to and consume a lot of will become unhealthy if it starts pushing a major calorie surplus you wouldn’t otherwise have.
Edit: typo and left a word out in the bit on neurons in the stomach. It’s a very interesting field of research that could, even probably will, tell us things about how addictions of all forms operate biologically that we didn’t know at all in the coming years.
Edit 2: technically it’s not just Ozempic spearheading this and it’s the entire class of medicines that interact directly with the neural pathways & receptors in the stomach, but everyone has heard of Ozempic at this point so I figured that was more accessible.
I'm guessing this is sarcasm. People hear things and they assume they're right even when they aren't, especially when enough people say it. Drives me nuts. I tell them to Google the component monosaccharides of HFCS and table sugar and get back to me. The real problem that they miss though it's staring them right in the face is that people eat too much and not just sugar.
“Healthier” doesn’t mean it’s healthy it just means it’s “not AS bad”
Soda isn’t good for you, ever. Sugar in moderation is good in foods but just drinking sugar chemical water isn’t.
But the HFCS is worse.
There are studies that prove consuming HFCS does have a different effect in human bodies then consuming sugar - as illustrated here, chemistry is a complex series of interactions - only made more complicated when intersecting with the complex field of biology. Chemists often make the mistake of applying the chemistry rules and assume biology follows similar principles - but if this was true we would not have a need for human safety studies in medicine, and math would be able to explain life science the same way it can explain chemistry - and obviously this is proven to be not the case! Biology is a highly complex interaction that includes chemistry, so it can be easy to make incorrect assumptions. Biology studies have a lot more data to contend with and have a much more difficult time proving claims - it is not conclusively proven that there is no difference OR a significant difference between consuming high fructose corn syrup and sugar - but there is evidence that *suggests* the two do interact with human biology differently, even if chemically they are almost identical. This concept is further illustrated by the debate over vitamins and synthetic foods - but human testing has proven biology does not necessarily react to chemically identical substances in the same way as the same substance produced by biology (plants). (One clear example - iron is better absorbed through food than iron supplements, and this is well documented.) We don’t have any scientific consensus as to why, other than it is very complex, and chemists like to argue that that isn’t the case (despite the many studies and examples and us not being able to make a meal in pill) because biology functions on a level that just doesn’t make sense in the world of chemistry.
Yes. (when talking about acidic syrup drinks)
What if they are the same ingredients, but what changes is the quality of the ingredients and where they come from. Fructose, glucose, etc. can be extracted in various ways and various compounds.
55 : 42 ratio broke my brain for a second. I was like, "but that doesn't add up to 100" before remembering ratios don't need to do that, lol.
Edit: TH-cam thought my ratio was a timestamp, even though the video doesn't actually go that long ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
Wikipedia says that two common formulations of HFCS are 55% fructose by dry weight and 42% fructose by dry weight. So I'm now questioning where this video's 55:42 ratio came from. Chemical reactions with integer ratios tend to have smaller integers.
Straight from Wikipedia "HFCS is 24% water, the rest being mainly fructose and glucose with 0-5% unprocessed glucose oligomers."
I worked as a fructose lab chemist testing for fructose-glucose ratios via HPLC. It's 55% fructose, 42% glucose and the rest is solids and water. Of course it's never exactly 55%, products are accepted within a 1% margin of error for fructose, so 54.5 to 55.5%. Also not all HFCS contains 55%, 42% fructose is commonly used for food while the higher one is used in beverages
@@fc-js3qj Thanks for the clarification. It seems to be a bit of a coincidence that there is a 42% fructose HFCS, while HFCS 55 has 42% glucose. That threw me off until your reply.
It's not about the sweetener. It's being bottled in glass that makes it taste much better than being bottled in plastic or aluminium. This applies to any beverage.
Please elaborate. What, exactly, makes it taste better? What properties of the containers specifically affect the flavor in which ways?
I don’t know the answer.
I do no that Glass is a much better heat sink than thin plastic
Soda in glass will stay colder longer
Moore’s Law equates CO2 solubility to temperature
So colder Coke is fizzier longer
So Coke is colder and fizzier in a Cold Glass Bottle
Also if kept long enough coke in a can will ear through the internal thin plastic layer in a can
Taste is a complex topic in and of itself
1. Aluminium cans have a plastic liner.
2. There is American coke in glass bottles.
@@Tamarocker88 It's a bot commenting that. They have zero proof that it is because one is in glass and the other in metal/plastic.
What did you dilute it with, chlorine in tap water will throw it off.
6:27 locking in a prediction: Sucrose dissociates into its component glucose and fructose molecules when dissolved, that's why you're detecting it
8:24: Ok, so it was acid, not water, that made it dissociate, so I was partly right!
@@rzeqdwIt's not a dissociation, it's a reaction that occurs.
Not dissociation. Don't try to use big words to sound smart if you're going to end up using the wrong ones. It just proves you're fake
@@VndNvwYvvSvv OH NO, I DIDN'T USE A WORD CORRECTLY. SORRY FOR NOT HAVING A CHEMISTRY DEGREE. I GUESS I SHOULD JUST LEAVE AND STOP WATCHING CHEMISTRY CHANNELS THEN.
@rzeqdw Nobody said that. Notice the immediate overreaction then jumping to a false dilemma of extremes. This is a prime example of a television watcher.
Mexican coke to me tastes closer to how coke used to before the new coke debacle and that’s why I enjoy it more.
It's all just in your head, if you only ever drank coke by blind taste test method you'd never know the difference.
That's because water quality in Mexico hasn't changed, so it's way better than ours now
@@randysalsman6992 definitely not, I have tried it and can tell the difference. So did over 70% of the people in the video lol.
I'd like to point out that the phosphoric acid is most likely just in there as it was used as a steriliser for the equipment used to make coke, it is a so called no rinse steriliser and can be used without the extra step of washing it away after sterilisation.
Y'all know a chemist is getting serious when he whips out the volumetric flasks. Good work!
I can tell the difference between pop/soda sweetened with sucrose, and those sweetened with HFCS. In fact, I once brought examples of each of Sprite to work and did a blind taste test with my coworkers. We could all tell the difference. The flavor is the same, but the consistency on your tongue is different. I’m not sure how to describe it, and this isn’t perfect, but there’s a “tackiness” or slight difference in the stickiness of the drinks sweetened with HFCS. Those sweetened with sucrose taste “cleaner,” no sticky “finish” to the taste.
No you can't. The man scientifically proved there's no sucrose left in the drink. There's more differences between the sucrose sweetened and the HFCS sweetened soda. Those are the differences you're tasting, not the sweeteners.
I hadn't heard about this but was curious. Right after the information about the study was presented my first thought was "something is breaking it down into fructose and glucose".
Guys, I never even finished college. People seem to have forgotten how to use their brains and critical thinking skills.
I'm glad this video set the record straight!
So I went back to the paper and responses, and I feel like this video is glossing over what is actually going on. The original paper was never intending to claim that cane sugar was not added to Mexican coke, just that there is no sucrose in the final product (and therefore it's not nutritionally much better than drinks sweetened with corn syrup). But actually that was a footnote, the main issue is that the sugar content on drink labels doesn't match what is actually in the bottle. That 'debunking' was basically an industry lobbying group trying to knock down a straw man rather than address the real problem.
Assuming you lived near a bottling plant, you could realistically get a coke that contained at least 70% unreacted sucrose. I don't think we should expect explicit labeling requirements for the reaction products within a food, that seems especially asinine if the levels might change over the course of storage.
@@clankclankimatank I may have been unclear. The total amount of sugar that was added to the drinks in the study were off from what was on the labels - the reaction happening isn't the issue.
@@pianoforte611 huh? You'll have to link the study you're looking at, because the one referenced in the original Johnny Harris video actually has slightly less measured sugar content to what's indicated on the label (11g on label, 10.4g in analysis)
Take a mexican coke , open it and leave it out for 12 hours open, it won't go flat... try that with american coke, it'll go flat in an hour... so there must be a difference
That has nothing to do with sugar. Just how you carbonate the soda. Also no. Mexican coke does go flat when you leave it out. It doesn’t just have infinite co2
I don't care what your video says I can definitely tell there's a difference in the sweetener so they're definitely not both high fructose and might be the parts of my fructose but it's not a definitely tastes more like sugar so I'm going to say I don't care what you say
Well, I am a little confused, that you, as a chemist, did not consider the idea of hydrolysis right from the beginning. I, as an inorganic chemist, did. But then the video would have been pretty short, I suppose.
I'm pretty sure this was used as a framing device to show a good methodology for testing and learning. :)
I am also shocked that I ended up with a university education in chemistry without ever being taught that sucrose hydrolyzes in soda. FWIW the two professors we reached out to for review also hadn’t heard of it (and they work with sugar all day long, mostly in kombucha). I think it’s one of those weird facts that few people know but then once you learn it you’re like OF COURSE, how could I have not known!
@@ACSReactions it's strange that it isn't taught in chemistry class, I am studying medicine in italy and the spontaneus hydrolysis of the glucosidic bond in water was one of the first subjects we learned.
@@ACSReactions congratulations you just figured out that school is for idiots
@monikalala3810 Wow, there are, a lOt, of commas, in this comment,
Hold up, so this means there is basically zero health difference between "sugar" sodas and "corn syrup" sodas? I feel cheated.....
The general consensus is there's not much difference healthwise, even if the sucrose isn't converted to fructose and glucose. It's all bad for you in large amounts. No such thing as a "healthier" sugary drink unless it just has way less sugar of any kind.
Why is everyone saying "corn syrup" when it's high fructose corn syrup? They aren't the same things.
That whole thing about acids working as a catalyst is known by many beekeepers because we have to feed our bees sugar syrup during the fall and we use vinegar to invert the sugars to keep them from crystalizing, etc. As soon as you added that phosphoric I knew what the result would be.
So, unless. you’re getting the Mexican Coke the day it’s bottled, there’s no point to going out of your way to get it, unless you’re low on sodium.
I disagree bcuz as we saw ppl can indeed taste the diff and id argue thats bcuz a 50/50 mix of sugars and a 55/42 mix do indeed taste diff to each other - which is even why it has more salt in it, to compensate for flavour diffs btwn the two sugars so it can taste more like coke is supposed to taste like
Also, the diff in sodium is so low that it wont matter; if youre low on sodium just add a salt packet to your coke of either kind
I suggest you drink whatever soda you like. (In moderation)
@@SylviaRustyFaeSalt is a taste enhancer, I use it in coffee and tea... fantastic... try it! However, if you can actually taste the salt, you've used too much. When I ask the baristas for the salt instead of chocolate powder or cinnamon, they think I'm mad.
Except that fructose is less healthy than glucose, which latter is the exact sugar that powers cellular functions.
@@judewarner1536 Salt does affect flavour yes, i nvr talked about addin enuf to taste it - my pt is just that its not salt alone here, its the ratios of sugars