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Comment by philwelch | Hacker News Reader

Which brings to mind an interesting tangent.

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.

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I love my coke here in Australia, and a few years ago Coke Zero came out promising 'Tastes just like regular coke!'. Tasted nothing at all like it.

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.

> "Coke tasted far superior to Pepsi, how could there even be a competition?"

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!

Coke in Australia is made with sugar, not with corn syrup. It's noticeable different to pepsi.

Interestingly my personal taste-testing anecdote in this thread started because I stated that I could distinguish between American Coke and Mexican Coke (given that one is corn syrup and one is cane sugar) which led to the challenge to even be able to identify Coke over Pepsi.

Might still be, that one wouldn't be able to distinguish corn syrup Coke from corn syrup Pepsi. And similar for a comparison between the sugared versions.

The switch to New Coke happened just as the HFCS transition was being made, which is part of a conspiracy theory all its own.

I studied this a little.

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.

More people drink Pepsi. The minority who drink Coke, drink enough of it to sell more syrup than Pepsi.

More people drink Coke.

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.

The Pepsi corporation ownes some fast food chains in the US, so you're not going to find Coca-Cola at a Taco Bell for example. Aside from that, I've never really had trouble finding Coca-Cola in any kind of restaurant. Then again, I don't usually look.

I think coke and pepsi try for exclusive arrangements at every dispensary. That means most restaurants prefer a discount from say pepsi for exclusivity, than to offer both with reduced profits.

Pepsi doesn't own YUM! Brands anymore, but does have permanent contracts with all their restaurants.

Availability varies significantly by region. For whatever reason, some parts of the US are Coke-centric and others are Pepsi-centric.

^Malcom Gladwell's "Blink"

> It would seem that the tasted of Coke is affected as much by its branding as by its recipe!

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...

From what I recall of the presentations at the Coke HQ/Museum in Atlanta, there's more to the memories than marketing. It also has to do with the association of the beverage to the pleasurable experiences where you've drank it. This explains why e.g. Pepsi fought hard to be the official beverage of the NFL, so that people can associate being at a football game with drinking Pepsi.

Or you can just buy kosher coke

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_formula#Kosher_Coca-C...

Or buy Pepsi Throwback, which is a mass produced version of kosher Pepsi.

In Jerusalem it is possible to get Coca-Cola from two different plants. One is the Israeli plant near Tel Aviv. The other is a Palestinian plant near Ramallah. I can tell the difference in between the two.

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.

I find it interesting that both the Israeli and Palestinian drinks differ from the American version.

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)

There is also an American version of the story. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/Kasherin...

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.

Here in Chile Coke is still made with sugar. For my honeymoon I went to the US and found that the Coke over there was undrinkable. Since they're using HFCS the drink is much more bitter instead of sweet so I can understand why Pepsi does slightly better in the US.

It made me kind if sad being a long time Coke fan.

Coke outsells Pepsi in most areas of the US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi#Rivalry_with_Coca-Cola

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 "Pepsi Challenge" was the brainchild of none other than erstwhile PepsiCo president John Sculley, who you mind remember for later running Apple into the ground.

Also, it tastes better.

And is believed to be better for you.

But probably isn't (I say, as I sip from a bottle of Mexican Coke).

I'd like to see a controlled experiment. Are you willing to take the Pepsi Challenge?

It is interesting to me that so many people seem to believe that it's difficult to distinguish between different cola products. I'm a programmer at a game studio and when I randomly asserted that I could distinguish between Coke and Pepsi they immediately scoffed and said that I could take the test, but no one passes the test. Blind test results? 100% correct (the test only had Coke and Pepsi proper, no random RC cola.)

I don't think I'm a freak; can the average Joe not distinguish between the taste of Coke and Pepsi?

Perhaps you're a supertaster. I think I am; I find many green vegetables taste absolutely disgusting, which is a common problem among supertasters as they can taste certain substances normals can't.

That's an interesting thought, I hadn't even considered anything along those lines. After reading about it for a bit I find that I cannot disqualify it from being a possibility. I've also read studies about having other senses heightened due to the lack of strength in other senses; specifically, due to a nasal inflammation condition I have I've always had difficulties with my sense of scent. Maybe I have a heightened sense of taste to compensate? Either way it's something interesting to think about, so thanks. :)

Olfactory and gustatory analysis of flavors are intricately linked; losing smell severely diminishes one's ability to discriminate between subtly different aromas. Indeed, smell generally dominates here. So I don't think that's what happened.

I agree, but go put them in a food, cooked as an ingredient, and its fine. Its the raw veggies by themselves that disgusting.

It depends how you do the tests. People in the US tend to have drinks very cold, which makes it harder to tell the difference. Doing "sip" tests makes a difference too.

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.

I can tell the difference right away and I am definitely not someone with a particularly acute sense of taste. I won't even drink the Pepsi.

It is genetic. If you can tell, you can tell easily, but most people can't tell.

No, I don't think it's unusual. I've watched a former colleague (now the state superintendent of schools) successfully identify not only pepsi from coke, but coke, diet coke (which he drinks regularly), and caffine-free diet coke from each other in a blind test.

How do you think "New Coke" happened? Malcolm Gladwell has the details in one of his books. You remember back when Pepsi used to do those taste test ads saying more people preferred Pepsi? Coke repeated the tests internally and found they were right (barely).

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.

HFCS 55% fructose 45% glucose

Sucrose (regular sugar) 50% fructose 50% glucose

Not much of a difference.

It's enough of a difference that Mexican coke is flatter and tastes sweeter than the HFCS flavor.

? Sucrose is sucrose. It's its own molecule. The only way you could describe it as 50% fructose 50% glucose is if you also described water as 66% hydrogen and 33% oxygen.

You could also describe water as 8 parts oxygen to 1 part hydrogen, mass wise.

I'm not a biologist or chemical engineer I'm just going by the information I can find and decipher.

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.

Yes, a sucrose molecule can be broken down. But the full sucrose molecule still behaves differently from the glucose/fructose mix that it was being compared to. Even if the glucose/fructose mix was exactly 50%/50%, that mixture of glucose and fructose molecules would still behave differently from a pure sucrose solution.

Wow, even a simple lookup of those four terms on Wikipedia can easily tell you how wrong you are. You fail science, forever.

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