Home Page Music Writings Jackie Hall
A two-liter bottle of Coke with a yellow cap.
Not the normal white one, mind you, but a yellow one. I thought it odd.
And on doing some digging, well, I have discovered something quite interesting.
Every year, as you may know, Jews celebrate Passover. Jewish holidays seem marked by an intimidating slew of dietary restrictions, customs, and general culinary wackiness, and Passover is no exception.
What does this have to do with Coke? Well, at Passover one is forbidden from consuming product made from certain grains. Corn is on that list. Coke is sweetened using a nasty little product that goes by the name of high-fructose corn syrup.
I'll sidestep the many alleged health issues with high-fructose corn syrup, as there are many...for some reason this one tends to bring out the tinfoil-hat crowd on the internet, with the attendant dearth of any informative literature on the subject. The method by which it's made is not one I'm terribly comfortable with, to be honest with you. However, my problem with high-fructose corn syrup is not that it might be bad for you - it's that when used it soda, it makes it taste horrible.
Soft drinks weren't always sweetened using high-fructose corn syrup. Coke was no exception. The switch occurred during a singular event in the history of Coca-Cola.
As some you may recall, in 1985 Coke made the suicidal decision to change their formula, a formula that had remained unaltered for more than seventy years and had made them the undisputed kings of the soda world. Was this the world's dumbest business decision or a very clever ruse?
New Coke changed proportions of the main ingredients in the cola mixture, and substituted vanillin, an artificial vanilla flavoring, for the real vanilla that they had previously used. As an interesting side note, this move destroyed the economy of Madagascar, a primary producer of real vanilla, for several years. New Coke also changed sweeteners to high-fructose corn syrup.
The move was roundly condemned by Coke fans throughout the world, and after about a year, Classic Coke was re-introduced (As of 1998, only a few locations in the Midwest still carried New Coke, now know as "Coke II"). However, one important thing had changed.
The soda was no longer flavored with sucrose, but rather with high-fructose corn syrup.
The
fraction of a cent in cost savings provided by the switch made billions
of
dollars in profit for Coca-Cola bottlers. Note that I say
bottlers, and
not the Coca-Cola corporation itself. The
actual production and distribution of Coca-Cola follows a typical
foodstuff
franchising model, as anyone who has worked in a McDonalds knows of.
The
Coca-Cola Company only produces syrup concentrate, which it sells to
various
bottlers throughout the world who hold Coca-Cola franchises for one or
more
geographical areas. The bottlers produce the final drink by mixing the
syrup
with filtered water and high-fructose corn syrup/sugar (or specified
artificial
sweeteners) and fill it into cans and bottles, which the bottlers then
sell and
distribute to retail stores, vending machines, restaurants and food
service
distributors. The bottlers are normally also responsible for all
advertisement
and other sales initiatives within their areas.
And this is where we get into Passover.
Coke is kosher in and of itself (Rabbi Tobias Geffen certified it as such in 1935, being the only non-Coke employee to ever see their list of ingredients), but when mixed with high-fructose corn syrup, is not kosher for Passover. Obviously, this wasn't an issue before the bottlers made the changeover to using HFCS.
Coke, being a good corporation and not wanting to lose any sales to observant Jews during Passover, does something magical this time of year.
They get rid of the high-fructose corn syrup and do a bottling run of two-liter bottles that are sweetened with sugar, the way it was done when I was a child. And folks, I gotta tell you something. The difference...well, the difference is not even funny. It's incredible. One tastes like soda, and one, by comparison, tastes like soda made from some fairly dangerous industrial waste.
There's a difference in taste (that's the most obvious one) and there is also a considerable difference in viscosity. The HFCS version seems to leave behind a film coating the inside of your mouth. The sucrose version doesn't. It's...refreshing. It's good. It's what Coke was when you were a child.
Puppies and Coke and sheer magic.
If you live in New York you can get it in cans!
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