The coke taste difference could be due to HFCS vs table sugar, sure, but it also could be due to some other changes.
It seems weird that they’d make a different product formulation beyond the one that matters (sugar).
As to the taste difference, Mexican cola has double the sodium. But even then, most people cannot taste the difference. They think they can, proclaim they can, and talk up how great Mexican coke is, but when actually put to the test they have basically random odds of being right or not.
Fructose is mostly considered benign if consumed in moderation. You can get fatty liver if you consume to excess, but for most people it has no caloric value and is excreted from the body as a non-nutritive sweetener.
Good related video- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY66qpMFOYo
Go figure.
Let's set this up. I'm 100% sure I can tell the difference. I grew up in france drinking the sucrose version and I can definitely tell when I'm having a taste of my childhood vs. not. I think what you're trying to say is that you can't tell the difference.
Next you'll be telling me that I can't smell the vomit (butyrate) in Hershey's chocolate from the next room over?
Why has this tactic of trying to personalize everything on HN become so prevalent? It's profoundly lame.
I have never had Mexican coke, to my knowledge. As someone who isn't scientifically ignorant or swayed by Facebook "knowledge", I actually don't think HCFS is demonic, and rationally understand they both are just glucose and fructose in a drink like a cola, in slightly different ratios. If you are ingesting enough fructose from cola that it's a problem, you are whether it's sweetened with "sugar" or HFCS. And of course you're definitely consuming too much glucose, which has enormous evidence of harm.
But I was citing actual blind surveys, not personal declarations of taste supremacy. In surveys where people declared that Mexican coke was better, they more often than not chose the American coke as the better tasting coke. Revealing it as just foolish noise.
And there are mild differences. In fact there are differences between most bottling plants, and between cans, bottles, fountain, etc. Mexican coke is carbonated differently. Has a different sodium level. The HCFS / sucrose sugar thing is unlikely to be a relevant factor.
Straw man, I shared an article earlier about fructose skipping a step in the breakdown of glycolysis https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42695820. These reviews highlight the different effects of fructose and glucose on serum lipids https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2682989/, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8213607/. But yeah I guess I'm just a scientifically ignorant phd
With regards to taste, if there are other differences in the formulation Mexican vs US coke then that's another thing, but the difference is definitely noticeable.
> they more often than not chose the American coke as the better tasting coke
Probably because they grew up with it. People usually like what they are used to. This has to be controlled for. Do the same study with Mexican or European person.
> rationally understand they both are just glucose and fructose in a drink like a cola, in slightly different ratios
if they are so similar then that's even more impressive, because they definitely taste different.
> I have never had Mexican coke, to my knowledge
Maybe give it a try, just in case you can taste the difference.
By the way, taste is important. Warren Buffett famously described how the taste of Coke doesn't linger in your mouth, making you want to drink "3, 4, 5+ Cokes each day". Can't find the original document right now but here is the excerpt: https://x.com/EugeneNg_VCap/status/1652253327034560532.
This is part of the basis of his investment in Coca Cola. It would be interesting to figure out whether this is affected by the choice of sugar.
> In many microbes, fructose is phosphorylated on its 6-position and thereby follows nearly the same metabolic pathway as glucose. In mammals, however, fructose phosphorylation occurs on the 1-position, not 6-position, catalyzed by the enzyme ketohexokinase (Khk) (Heinz et al., 1968). The location of this initial phosphorylation is a pivotal difference, as fructose 1-phosphate (F1P) can be directly cleaved into three-carbon units, whereas F6P must be phosphorylated on its 1-position by phosphofructokinase, the most heavily regulated enzyme of glycolysis, before such cleavage. Thus, fructose bypasses the gating step of glycolysis.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6032988/
"try to find an actual proper double blind academic study that demonstrates a taste difference between sucrose and high fructose corn syrup"
are you not able to tell the difference between regular coke and mexican coke?