Poll: Prefer Sugar or Corn Syrup in Your Soda?

Very interesting. Still probably not good for you, but better I would think.

You forgot an option...I don't drink the crap.

I won't drink it either, but I'd prefer sugar over HFCS

Hi,
Here's a math lesson. Sucrose, table sugar, has the ratio 50%fructose:50%glucose. The fructose and glucose are bound together by mother nature. HFCS-55 is 55%fructose:45%glucose and the sugars are not linked. 55/45=1.22. That means that HFCS-55 sweetened drinks have 22% more fructose, compared to glucose.
That is one reason why we are sicker and fatter than we used to be. Coke made the switch to HFCS in 1984 and we have been guzzling ever since.
Ditch HFCS, especially in sweetened beverages.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is fine, despite the ridiculous food scares you always hear. Fructose is "fruit sugar", the sugar in honey and strawberries. I would suggest people be rational and not listen to people trying to create food scares.

The reason we have High Fructose Corn Syrup instead of sugar as a sweetener is because of government meddling. For about a hundred years now, the US government has had trade barriers against cheap imports of sugar. This is to protect special interest sugar farmers in the US who are too inefficient to compete with poorer foreign sugar farmers. This means higher food costs for US families. Food producers switched to HFCS as a cheaper alternative.

A lot of farmers in the US should be ashamed of themselves.

Fructose is converted to glucose by the liver. it doesn't matter. eat lots. it tastes great and eventually will kill you. Paydays for everyone.

I have no problem with using HFCS in soda because it's pretty much calorically the same as regular sugar. It doesn't make you fatter than regular sugar would; but the reason people blame HFCS for the obesity epidemic is that food manufacturers add it to just about everything under the sun. When they're just replacing sugar with HFCS, there's no real difference except the taste and texture may be a bit different. So if that's important to you, go for the sugar-sweetened stuff. If you're looking to save calories, either drink water or drink diet soda.

I personally don't have a problem with diet soda, so that's what I drink when I want a soda...preferably Diet Coke or Diet A&W root beer.

Okay, it's ashame that the choices don't include "None of the Above"

It's all bad for our health. I wonder how Pepsi will market this new drink. They'll probably use the punch line "Made with Real Sugar" so people will think it's healthier.

I'm not buying it.

This reminds me of Jolt Cola, who used to advertize with "twice the cafeine, real sugar." It used to keep me awake in long programming sessions at night...

Coke is selling their product made with cane sugar in Costco stores. It is from their plants in Mexico. My adult children have been buying it now for about two years. I guess Pepsi is seeing a reason to compete. It would be interesting to learn why Coke is only putting their product in Costco stores.

Hopefully Pepsi can return to its original formula successfully and profitably. Coke's correction of its fiasco with New Coke has still produced an undrinkable synthetic sweet Classic Coke.

I prefer chemicals tyvm. I Actually don't like the regular stuff.

I suppose sugar or HFCS is a wash provided you order the diet Big Mac to go with it. ;)

If straight sucrose would be higher GI and calories (I'm thinking it might be - fructose is sweeter hence they use less?) - if that's the case gimme the corn.

The reason they use HFCS is because of the corn lobby in the United States, so now farmers are actually payed to grow corn which is then turned into a sweetener and put into almost all our food. Like someone already said, US farmers are unable to grow sugar that competes with the farmers in Caribbean countries, Brazil, etc. (the climate there is better suited for it) I'd rather use real sugar to support those poorer countries because truly European countries and the United States are responsible for their comparative smaller economies, through the slave trade (which for hundreds of years built up our economies at the cost of theirs) and the continued use of their resources without proper compensation.

It's funny that this is coming out as throwback. Because other countries in Europe and also in Mexico use real sugar in their pepsi and coke. My father goes to a special store to pick up this import pop at a high mark-up.I just had some Dublin Dr. Pepper the other day. You can definetly taste the difference. That lovely burning sensation of a real COKE! Real sugar is how pop should be. It's not a real throwback, its just that American consumers don't demand it.

Will the throwback version come in a glass bottle as well?

If we can start to throw out all use of HFCS we'll finally be taking a step to improving all our lives. It's amazing what we're willing to drink or eat all for the sake of saving money. I'm sure the amount of sugar put into these coke products are still above the amount we should be exposing our bodies to daily, but at least it's something our body can recognize and break down properly...

There are many reasons why I'm adamantly for keeping High Fructose Corn Syrup out of my body, and that it should be banned as a food additive:

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1) High Fructose Corn Syrup is much cheaper than table sugar in the United States because the Corn Refiners' Association receives heavy corn subsidies, in addition to sugar tariffs. Therefore, it has less to do in helping the farmers than in helping the industry itself make a profit.

2) High Fructose Corn Syrup can be manipulated to contain equal amounts of fructose and glucose, or even up to 80 percent fructose and 20 percent glucose. Therefore, with almost twice the fructose, the notion that High Fructose Corn Syrup is just as safe as sugar or honey is preposterous. You might argue fruit itself contains roughly a 50/50 fructose/glucose ratio, but what's also true is that fruit contains fiber, which slows down the metabolism of any kind of sugar. In contrast, High Fructose Corn Syrup is absorbed at a rapid pace.

3) Besides the general obesity/digestion anti-HFCS argument.......High Fructose Corn Syrup is also detrimental to the environment. According to a March 9, 2008 Washington Post article, David Pimentel, a professor in Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has found that a combination of major subsidies for corn, as well as the fact that much of the land used for corn is not dedicated to crop rotation and also requires more pesticides and fertilizer while depleting soil nutrients, has resulted in considerable environmental damage, including an unprecedented amount of atrazine in the water in farm country: a nasty herbicide that, at concentrations as little as 0.1 part per billion, has been shown to turn male frogs into hermaphrodites.

4) It's almost impossible to consume American corn without consuming genetically-modified versions of it in the process. According to Linda Forristal of the Weston A. Price Foundation:

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"According to a food technology expert, two of the enzymes used, alpha-amylase and glucose-isomerase, are genetically modified to make them more stable. Enzymes are actually very large proteins and through genetic modification specific amino acids in the enzymes are changed or replaced so the enzyme's "backbone" won't break down or unfold. This allows the industry to get the enzymes to higher temperatures before they become unstable."

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And given that the whole rest of my family are also opposed to genetic modification of food (they eat a lot of processed food) that alone convinces me to stay away from this additive, among other things.

5) Dr. Mehmet Oz, author of You: The Owner’s Manual, says:

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"The problem is that HCFS inhibits leptin secretion, so you never get the message that you’re full. And it never shuts off gherin, so, even though you have food in your stomach, you constantly get the message that you’re hungry"

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6) Nancy Appleton, in her recent article "Fructose Is No Answer For A Sweetener" reported that High Fructose Corn Syrup "has absolutely no enzymes, vitamins, or minerals, and in order to be processed once inside the digestive tract, it must rob the body’s stores of these precious micronutrients."

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And now we've heard new reports that much High Fructose Corn Syrup is contaminated with mercury, due to being produced from chlor-alkali plants used to make caustic soda, which is particularly engineered in industrial chlorine plants. All despite the fact that there is newer, cleaner technology that these plants can use, and that only FOUR plants in the United States still use mercury while all others don't (cited on page nine of the report as 1) Olin Corporation, at two plants in Augusta, Georgia and Charleston, Tennessee, 2) Ashta Chemicals in Ashtabula, Ohio and 3) PPG Industries in New Martinsville, West Virginia). And, as we can expect from the Fraud & Death Asso......err, I mean the Food & Drug Administration......while the FDA had evidence that commercial HFCS was contaminated with mercury FOUR YEARS AGO, the agency did not inform consumers, help change industry practice or conduct additional testing.

Of course, I would advise against drinking soda regularly also, and instead use stevia as a natural sweetener, or else eat more fruits and foods with natural sugars. But I understand nonetheless many love their processed foods, so at the very least do yourself a favor and choose sugar over HFCS..........for your own long-term good.

Now if they would give me a GLASS bottle instead of nasty old plastic toxic waste I would go back to drinking a 8 pack a week!!! I used to drink a lot of pepsi, then they took away glass and added genetically modified corn syrup and that was the end of me drinking it. I loved pepsi slushies! When I drank 2 or 3 pepsis a day I weighed 95 pounds. Once the genetically modified crap soy, corn and canola got into everything I gained weight eating the exact same things. I gave up ALL GM's and I now am thin again!

I stopped consuming high fructose corn syrup (mostly in the form of energy bars) a few months ago and felt like total crap at first. Dizzy, headache, weak. That passed and before I knew it I had dropped 10 pounds and lost 3 inches each in my waist and hips. I no longer crave sweets or feel constantly hungry. Anyone who thinks HFCS is a good food hasn't gone off it to see the difference it makes.