There's a recent trend for importing glass bottles of Coca-Cola from Mexico. The reason is that unlike American Coke, Mexican Coke has sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup. The reason American Coke has high fructose corn syrup is because of the US sugar tariff. So Mexican bottlers import American Coca-Cola concentrate, mix in carbonated water and some cane sugar of either Mexican or presumably Caribbean origin, and export the finished bottles of Coca-Cola back to the United States, simply to route around the damage of the US sugar tariff.
I don't think I'm a freak; can the average Joe not distinguish between the taste of Coke and Pepsi?
I've seen (uncontrolled not-scientific just-for-fun) tests where blindfolded volunteers could not tell the difference between coke and 7up / sprite.
For sure I agree with you; I think that I'd easily be able to tell the difference between pepsi and coke. But I've never tested myself.
So Coke decided to reformulate. Pepsi is sweeter than Coke, so that is what Coke did. They repeated their taste tests, got good results and told the whole world.
Where they had screwed up is that they used small containers for their latter taste tests. People are quite happy for sweetness in small quantities, but as the volume of drink gets larger they prefer less sweetness "density". Naturally the new Coke was far too sweet and there was the resultant backlash.
TL/DR: A major contributor to Coke messing up "New" Coke was using too small testing cups.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_formula#Kosher_Coca-C...
Similarly, the cola wars never made sense here - Coke tasted far superior to Pepsi, how could there even be a competition?
Then I visited the US and only had access to the corn-syrup coke, which I'd never had before, as we have our own sugar industry. Tasted much more like Coke Zero - it seems we'd just imported the US advertising slogan there. And the cola wars made much more sense... well... not in themselves, just that they could have happened.
Actually, double-blind taste tests was reputedly in favor of Pepsi. Pepsi, for a long time, used this in their marketing, and Coke confirmed the results for themselves, which was the main driving force behind the creation of the disastrously failed New Coke.
It would seem that the tasted of Coke is affected as much by its branding as by its recipe!
Pepsi tastes better than Coke on a single sip because it's sweeter, but the preference among consumers gets murkier if you have to drink a whole can of the stuff. And even moreso if you want to have two cans.
Sweeter == better to have a taste. Not necessarily to have larger quantities though.
http://www.nytimes.com/ref/business/20070527_COKE_GRAPHIC.ht...
I was, however, surprised at how difficult it was to find Coke in many restaurants in the US. That's not usually the case in the UK, for example.
There was an interesting experiment where some researchers put subjects inside an MRI machine, and then fed them two samples of cola. Sometimes both drinks were anonymous, and sometimes the drink was labelled as Pepsi or Coca-Cola, while the other was anonymous but actually the same drink. When the drinks were anonymous, people seemed to like both equally, but when told what the drinks were, people tended to prefer Coca-Cola over the anonymous drunk. Even more interestingly, when people were told they were drinking Coca-Cola, extra bits of their brain lit up, specifically memory and cognitive control, which suggests that when you think you're drinking Coca-Cola, it's not just the immediate sensation of drinking the coke that affects how much you enjoy it, but also the effect of all of that marketing that makes your brain think "Mmmm, Coca-Cola is delicious!"
http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/briefs/mentalhealth/h...
Sucrose (regular sugar) 50% fructose 50% glucose
Not much of a difference.
If the sucrose molecule can be broken down/decomposed into two other molecules one fructose and the other glucose is that not accurate?
From what I understood sucrose is composed of fructose (an isomer of glucose) and glucose of which the molecule sucrose is comprised of. The human body breaks down sucrose and then fructose in the liver into just glucose for the body to use for fuel.
It made me kind if sad being a long time Coke fan.
I think some people might have a misconception that Pepsi does better due to the very popular Pepsi Challenge marketing campaign. But if you think about it, that campaign is a classic "underdog" campaign. It would be silly for a product that's already winning in the number one position to "challenge" the number two product.
The Israeli plant adds aromas to their Coca-Cola as it is common for Israeli drinks to add them. The also use very high concentration of carbon. So much that the lid can shoots off like champagne.
The Palestinian one is a lot cheaper and far better than American one IMO. So what I use to do was buy the Palestinian glass bottles and the Israeli large bottles. heh.
My American friends always preferred the Palestinian one, which lead me to believe I the Palestinian version was using the American concentrate, and the Israeli version an Israeli-adapted one.
And as I'm already discussing the topic of Israeli Coca-Cola, there's a famous story (though citation needed, so take with a grain of salt, &c) that the highly guarded secret formula was disclosed to Rabbi Moshe Yehuda Leib Landa, so he could certify the drink as Kosher. After the Rabbi's death, his son continues to certify the drink as Kosher, but wasn't disclosed the recipe: he took his father's word for it being Kosher (a highly unorthodx [pun not intended] practice)
I quiet like the feel of opening an Israeli bottle and drinking the first cup. Sad to say I have not found a similar Coca-Cola experience anywhere else in the world.
In the early part of the 1900s they used to sell the product at soda fountains in malls etc. At one point two businessmen wanted to bottle it instead. Bottling at the time was not particularly advanced, product often spoiled, refrigeration wasn't widespread, and they are heavy. Coke figuring they had a couple of chumps then sold them worldwide perpetual exclusive bottling rights. Oops. Coke has managed to buy back around half of those rights from people around the world. You should look carefully at the bottles and cans. They usually tell you if they were produced under the authority of the Coca Cola bottling company (the company from those businessmen) or Coca Cola itself.
(1) Ok, so you have the exact recipe and can make something that is identical to Coke. What are you going to call it? How are you going to market it? Which retailers are going to buy it from you? How many years of funding do you have for lawyers?
Anyone can make a cola flavour drink. The hard part is marketing, logistics and sales. Heck there is even an open source cola to get your started: