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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, both New Coke and Coke "Classic" (aka new coke 1.1) both use high fructose corn syrup, which is substantially cheaper in the USA in industrial quantities due to huge tax-funded agricultural subsidies for corn (maize) farmers. These remain in place today (which is why everything in the US is sweetened with corn syrup instead of sugar).

"Old coke", as well as what is now known as "mexican coke" in the USA, used/use sugar.

New coke was the flag day for switching to a cheaper sweetener in the US market. When they switched "back" to coke "classic", they kept the new sweetener.

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This article claims that Coca Cola switched to high fructose corn syrup in 1984 which was a year before the debut of New Coke

https://www.motherjones.com/food/2019/07/the-secret-history-...

When I first moved to USA from Denmark, back in the late 90s, the chemical, sickly syrupy taste of Coca Cola made me gag and I was very surprised in terms of how different it was from the European version. Then I found out that in Europe, they use sugar rather than corn syrup. It's amazing what the Americans will put up with.

Two things here.

First, people have done triangle tests on sugar- vs. HFCS- formulations of Coke (Serious Eats has a good one) and, while there is definitely a perceptible difference, the preferences aren't what you'd expect. People who go into these tests saying they prefer cane sugar Coke tend actually to reveal an HFCS preference in the test.

Second, formulations in different parts of the world vary in ways other than which sweetener they use. It's possible that regardless of the sugar involved, there might just be more of it in the formulation (or in the way it's delivered, since concentration systems also vary) in your least-preferred Coke instances.

Thomas' knowledge-dropping in a sibling comment is more in depth, but anecdotally: I prefer sugar coke after drinking HFCS coke in the USA for a few months, then prefer HFCS coke after drinking sugar coke in europe for a few months.

Non-lite/diet/zero coke is always sickly syrupy oversweet regardless of whether it's sugar or corn syrup. It's sort of what people are going for. I can't believe I used to drink liters of it a day growing up; I limit myself to a dozen servings a year or so (of the full sweet stuff) these days.

Might be a novelty effect there. We all tend to like new foods if we eat one food too much.

Well is the same with Carlsberg, they taste "different" around the world.

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