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Comment by mercutio2 | Hacker News Reader

What gave you the impression Coca Cola uses vanilla beans OR vanillin?

Different regions use different ingredients for Coke, so I guess it’s possible this is true in your region, but my coke can in California doesn’t appear to list Vanilla in its ingredients.

Additionally, there was this lawsuit about Vanilla Orange Coke containining vanillin, which leads me to think it’s unlikely there’s much Vanilla Bean involved in non-Vanilla Coke, at least:

https://www.classaction.org/news/fake-vanilla-coca-cola-comp...

With that said, numbers like 99% of vanilla being from vanillin does sound like a made up statistic.

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While I agree that 99% seems made up. I am a bit of a chemistry hobbyist and produce a wide range of flavourings. I have also been to vanilla farms and bought lots of vanilla pods. The yield from vanilla pods, not matter what process I tried, such as, a very long soak on ethanol, hot ethanol or Soxhlet extraction, yield so little I find it hard to believe any of those bulk consumer products container real vanilla from pods.

Just anecdotal or course, a sample of one and all that. :)

I also see no rational reason that the average Coca Cola serving contain any amount of real vanilla pods, given how expensive it is and that vanillin is chemically identical with one main flavoring compund contained in real vanilla.

If Coke (or Coke Vanilla even) would cobtain real vanilla, they'd advertise it for sure. I don't remember anything like that

"Together they make up a vanilla flavor. Vanillin is just one molecule in that complex mixture, but an important one. However, whereas vanilla will always contain vanillin, just because something contains vanillin doesn't mean it contains vanilla beans."

Two thins: Its up to the local bottler whether to use Cane Sugar or beet sugar or Vanilla or Vanillin. Mexican coke uses both Cane sugar and Vanilla.

A bar coke from a canister usually had the syrup a bit heavy so you can taste the difference much easier.

OK, so it might contain some id you're lucky.

That's what was trying to say by using the "average" qualifier though.

I doubt there's much economic incentive to use real vanilla in 99% of the world / Coca-Cola's market.

With the different types of sugar, it's easier for me to imagine a company doing this for economic reasons.

There are some very old articles on the web from when Vanilla Coke was introduced, that they had been draining European markets for vanilla pods, ostensively. Sounds like astroturfing to me honestly. There's also a clas action lawsuit about missing real vanilla :D

Call me cynical, but does anything stop companies from using one drop of real vanilla extract, a couple of gallons of artificial vanilla flavor, and then stick it in the ingredients as “natural and artificial flavors” and put a big “MADE WITH REAL VANILLA” badge on the front?

I have seen "cider flavoured" drinks where actual cider is 5th on the list of ingredients (water, vodka, sugar, flavours, cider). It is very deceptive.

Yes, there are false advertising laws which broadly prohibit labels that are deceptive or misleading to a reasonable consumer.

In Mantikas v. Kellogg Co. (2018) [1], the 2nd Circuit allowed a false-advertising class-action suit to proceed against Cheez-Its labeled 'Made with Whole Grain' that only had 8g of whole grain in a 29g serving, whose primary ingredient was white flour.

The opinion explicitly rejects the situation you describe:

> Such a rule would permit Defendant to lead consumers to believe its Cheez-Its were made of whole grain so long as the crackers contained an iota of whole grain, along with 99.999% white flour. Such a rule would validate highly deceptive marketing.

[1] https://casetext.com/case/mantikas-v-kellogg-co-1/

Because it's a famous fact. It's included in "natural flavors" -- it doesn't list any of its flavorings, obviously.

When New Coke was introduced in 1985, it replaced the vanilla with vanillin, and the Madagascar economy crashed since that's where the vanilla comes from. Then when Coke Classic was (re-)introduced, it brought back the real vanilla and the Madagascar economy recovered. At least that's the story that keeps being repeated -- my understanding is that Coca-Cola won't officially confirm/deny since they keep all their flavorings secret. (It's not like I work for Coke or anything.)

Just google "new coke vanilla madagascar" and you'll find where it all comes from.

> Just google "new coke vanilla madagascar" and you'll find where it all comes from.

Do you have a source, perhaps from the Madagascar government?

I googled your phrase and all I got was a bunch of urban myth style blogspam all linking back to a single WSJ article from 1985.

Was the WSJ article credible? “All I found is an article in one of the world’s premier news publications” doesn’t match your implied tone.

From the wikipedia article on new Coke:

> New Coke was introduced on April 23, 1985. Production of the original formulation ended later that week.

Madagascar’s GDP grew from 3.9 to 4.3 billion between 1984 and 1986 well after Coca Cola would have stopped buying vanilla beans. There was a significant “collapse” to 3.2 billion in 1987 but that followed a 1986 Structural Adjustment Program with the IMF that called for significant budget cuts, liberalization, and austerity. The time line just doesn’t line up. As far as I can tell the commodity woes that struck Madagascar in the mid 1980s had to do with coffee, not vanilla.

So the answer is no, I don’t find glorified 1980s just-so blogspam in the WSJ to be credible just because it’s got recognizable initials like “WSJ”. It doesn’t even pass basic sanity checks.

Actually Coke would have resumed buying vanilla in 85 because that’s when New Coke was discontinued. I think it’s hard to say exactly what Coke’s buying of vanilla looked like as it likely relied heavily on futures and just-in-time manufacturing was less prevalent. 1985, coincidentally, had the lowest GDP between 80-85, the year Coke production, and presumably vanilla purchases, resumed. And, as you pointed out, GDP grew a lot in 1986, which was the first full year Coke resumed vanilla buying.

“Lowest GDP” means 3.8 billion in 1985 versus 3.9 billion in 1984. There was no economic collapse or crash as claimed by OP or the WSJ article. It was all nonsense sensationalism.

Coca Cola literally reintroduced the original formula less than three months later. They had zero to little impact on Madagascar’s economy in that time frame.

Lol ok, I’ll take your word for it over the WSJ. Also, aren’t you kind of ignoring that GDP greatly increased after Coke reverted back to the original formula (1986 GDP was 4.35B, up over 14% from 85)?

In either case, your original “smell test” comment really glosses over the 3% decline in GDP the year New Coke was introduced followed by a 14% increase the year following old Coke’s reintroduction. I’d say that passes the smell test, but isn’t definitive evidence that there was a noticeable impact from Coke.

Coca Cola’s revenue grew from 7.9 billion in 1985 to 8.67 billion in 1986 [1]. In that time frame Madagascar’s GDP fell from 3.9 to 3.8 billion.

+770 million => -100 million.

Coca Cola’s revenue fell from 8.67 billion in 1986 to 7.65 billion in 1987. In that time frame Madagascar’s GDP rose from 3.8 to 4.3 billion.

-1 billion => +0.5 billion.

There is no correlation. It doesn’t pass any smell test.

[1] https://ycharts.com/companies/KO/revenues_annual

No one is claiming that Coke’s revenue and Madagascar GDP are perfectly correlated. The claim was that the cessation of all vanilla buying from Coke caused a demand shock that harmed the economy in Madagascar. The data does not disqualify that possibility.

Also consider another thing: the revenue of Coke was multiple times that of the GDP of the entire country of Madagascar. Is it really surprising that this demand shock could occur?

> The claim was that the cessation of all vanilla buying from Coke caused a demand shock that harmed the economy in Madagascar.

No, crazygringo's claim was that the economy crashed:

> When New Coke was introduced in 1985, it replaced the vanilla with vanillin, and the Madagascar economy crashed since that's where the vanilla comes from.

I feel like I’m repeating myself here. GDP in Madagascar declined by 3% during the time in question. That’s a pretty big decline in a very short amount of time. During the GFC, GDP in the US contracted by 4.2% over two years, for reference. Are you implying that that a 3% decline is not a crash?

I’d like to point out that we already have evidence this happened. The WSJ reported on it at the time, and the WSJ is a credible institution. In this thread, we have someone rejecting this event using cherry picked data to fit their narrative, but their interpretation doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. Not to appeal to authority too much, but given the choice between a write up in the WSJ or some random commenter’s “smell test” decades later, I’m going with WSJ.

I hope that Coca Cola uses the artificial stuff. It would be a waste of good vanilla if it wasn't the case.

I looked at the product sheet ov vanilla coke in France, where it is a legal obligation to list how much of the ingredients mentioned on the packaging are present, and vanilla isn't mentioned at all, only "vanilla flavor" (most likely artificial vanillin). So it is very likely that not a single pod is involved in the manufacturing of the drink. At least in France, and considering the price of vanilla, probably in the rest of the world as well.

When considering exports, vanillin probably doesn't count since it is not vanilla.

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