The strange chemistry of Mexican Coke (video)
image: Mexican Coke tastes different than American Coke; after all, it’s sweetened using cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. That, at least, was the conventional wisdom until 2011, when a paper published in the journal Obesity found that Mexican Coke contained no cane sugar. Instead, the authors found plenty of glucose and fructose, which are the main ingredients in high-fructose corn syrup. Join our Reactions host George as he tests a bottle of Mexican Coke and confirms — to his utter surprise — the presence of glucose, then follows this mystery step by step to its shocking conclusion.
Credit: The American Chemical Society
WASHINGTON, Dec. 16, 2024 — Mexican Coke tastes different than American Coke; after all, it’s sweetened using cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. That, at least, was the conventional wisdom until 2011, when a paper published in the journal Obesity found that Mexican Coke contained no cane sugar. Instead, the authors found plenty of glucose and fructose, which are the main ingredients in high-fructose corn syrup. Join our Reactions host George as he tests a bottle of Mexican Coke and confirms — to his utter surprise — the presence of glucose, then follows this mystery step by step to its shocking conclusion.
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