Was at the store and saw NO SUGAR Dr. Pepper soft drink bottles.

Why do they say NO Sugar - when none of their drinks are made with sugar?

Coca Cola from Mexico(available where I live) is made with sugar - the US varieties are not.

Corn sweetners and other odd stuff is what is used - NO Sugar.

Aspartame is on the list of ingredients. Apparently "Diet" is a bad word now.

It's like TSCC. Different name, same taste.

HFCS is 100% sugar. It is not sucrose. It is glucose and fructose, which is the exact same thing that sucrose is, though the percentages are slightly different. Sucrose is exactly 50% each glucose and fructose, chemically bonded. When you ingest sucrose, the first thing that happens to it is that an enzyme “sucrase” splits the two sugars.

In high fructose corn syrup, the sugars come already split. In soft drinks, hfcs has slightly more fructose, which has a sweeter taste. In baked goods, hfcs has slightly more glucose, which doesn’t taste as sweet, but browns better when baked.

Chemists learned how convert corn starch in glucose back in the 1860s. It was basically “no fructose corn syrup”. Karo is the brand you’ve all probably heard of. Popular in baking for a hundred and fifty years. It doesn’t taste very sweet. Taste it, if you have some around the house.

Somewhere around 1960 (too lazy to look up exact date) chemists developed a process to convert glucose to fructose. high Fructose Corn Syrup doesn’t necessarily have more fructose than table sugar has. It simply has more than standard corn syrup, which has none.

Corn starch, glucose, and fructose, are all quite similar chemically, and pretty easy to convert one to the other. Fructose, the main sugar found in fruit (hence the name) is harder to digest because the liver has to convert it to glucose. Glucose is a sugar your body can use directly, which is why they use it in hospitals to supply energy to patients.


There are two reasons US companies mostly use HFCS. First, it dissolves very easily and doesn’t crystallize, so it can be used as a liquid with very low water content. As a liquid, it can be moved by pipe in food plants, much easier than handling granulated table sugar.

The other reason is that it is much cheaper. Most of that is because of protectionist tariffs to protect the US sugar industry. Yes, we have a sugar industry. Wasatch Front people should recognize the high school name Jordan Beetdiggers. Those were sugar beets they were digging, and the company was U and I Sugar, for Utah and Idaho.

I don’t know what the tariff level is now, but it used to triple the price of imported granulated sugar in the US compared to the general world price. Sugar in Mexico has no tariff on it of course, so there is no price advantage to using HFCS, so they don’t.

Yeah, I used to live for decades in the heart of US sugar country, plus had a biochemist in the family, which is where I learned all this.

Biochemical ignorance, adieu!

BoJ posted

"When you ingest sucrose, the first thing that happens to it is that an enzyme “sucrase” splits the two sugars"

Very true.
The next thing that happens to glucose is that it is phosphorylated to Glucose-6-phosphate. The next step is that it is isomerized to Fructose-6-phosphate.

The first step in fructose metabolism is that it is phosphorylated to Fructose-6-phoshate. After that, both fructose and glucose follow the exact same pathways.

Now I’m going to have to do some reading. I keep hearing that fructose is the more metabolically problematic of the two sugars, but I don’t know enough about that to say anything useful, which I may have demonstrated up-thread.

I always kept some Karo syrup around for my diabetic cat. On the rare occasions when his blood sugar appeared to be crashing, I would rub a small amount of Karo syrup on the roof of his mouth and his tongue. Then I would give him some food. The Karo syrup was very effective at quickly raising his blood sugar levels. I understand that in a pinch maple syrup, and I believe honey, work as well.

Honey and HFCS are chemically so close that there is a serious problem of honey being adulterated with HFCS, especially in China and Chinese export market.

Good to know. Fortunately, I always had Karo syrup within reach. My sweet old cat lived to be 17.5 years old, so I must have done something right. :) Towards the end of his life, he lost a lot of weight (for other reasons,) his blood sugar stabilized, and I was able to give him some relief from the twice-daily insulin shots. I loved that little guy very much.

Hey BoJ. What do you have to say about this stuff? It has all kinds of stuff in it. I always keep a tube in the house.

https://tomlyn.com/tomlyn-nutri-cal-high-calorie-nutritional-gel-malt-flavor-for-dogs-4.25-oz

High Fructose Corn Syrup is not Sugar.

Try giving a glass of Coke with it to someone allergic to Corn - and then try a glass of Coke with Sugar.

Get as technical as you want on an elemental level - Sugar and "equivalents" are not the same thing.

That's incorrect. Sugar is not just sucrose: it is a category of several different compounds, including sucrose, fructose, galactose, and others.

Sucrose, or white sugar, is in fact a combination of glucose and fructose. High Fructose Corn Syrup is also a combination of glucose and fructose; in fact, one of its alternative names is glucose-fructose syrup. Coke's transition from the sucrose version of glucose-fructose to the HFCS version of glucose-fructose occurred in the United States some fifty years ago, so anyone who has had an American-made Coke since about 1980 has been drinking the latter and not sucrose.

On the question about Mexican versus US Coke raised by others, Mexican Coke has been made with HFCS for at least a decade. The coke exported from Mexico to the States is made with sucrose, but ironically that version of the product isn't sold within Mexico.

I had a vision of BofJ explaining "How to do The Wedding Night!" and I passed out from boredom...

I was told or read I shouldn't drink diet drinks while I was pregnant. I was pregnant 38 years ago.

I know it is bad for me to drink a diet drink, but I do now. I had given it up, but when something significant happened in my life I went back to it and I decided then and there I was never going off it again. Oh well. I have to have some things I enjoy in life.

Again, knowledge from the family biochemist:
Aspartame is made from two amino acids commonly found in egg white. Amino acids are the building blocks of all proteins. Aspartame can’t be used in cooking, and in fact shouldn’t even be exposed to things like hot garages, because heat causes the amino acids to coagulate - exact same thing that happens when you heat an egg, or overcook a steak.

Once the aspartame has denatured by heat, it no longer tastes sweet(ish).

Aspartame also has the exact same calories per gram as table sugar. Considerably less aspartame is required to sweeten a drink than using sugar to sweeten a soft drink. The amount of sugar or HFCS in a soft drink is kind of startling, roughly ten teaspoons worth per 12 ounce can.

I adore Mexican Coke. There is one place in town that I can get it. I will get a couple of bottles and keep them in the fridge for as long as I can stand it.

Love love love Mexican Coke!

I like German Coke. It’s also made with cane sugar. But I don’t drink many soft drinks now. I stick to beer.

"I stick to beer." I love you Knotty! BTW, I am still up for adoption :)

Bwahahahahahaa! We can sit around and listen to John Prine while rescuing more dogs.

I insist on all-natural probiotic plant-based cage-free dolphin-safe gluten-free estate-sourced free-range certified organic union-crafted extra-virgin Royal Crown Cola.

I knew Marianne would foist that upon you. It was only a matter of time.

Mary Ann Summers, si!
Marianne Williamson, no!

Run as you will, my friend, but ultimately there is no escaping fate.

Just to be perfectly clear, I have no truck whatsoever with New Age concepts, let alone celebrities. As I completed my exit from Christian Science in the late 70s and early 80s, New Age was very trendy. I was very intrigued with the overlap of New Age and Christian Science: their foundational concepts are very similar, once you account for different terminology.

I attended a New Age fair, and was amused to see the Christian Science church had a booth.

That was also the period when I figuratively and literally sobered up. And when my politics got sane. Can you believe I voted for George McGovern?

Still kicking against the pricks, I see.

If you like mexican coke, whole food's cane sugar cola is as good, if not better, and MUCH cheaper. I like both, cane sugar is far less sweet and cloying than HFCS. (I actually prefer cane sugar pepsi to mexican coke, whole foods cola is more like pepsi) Another way to get real sugar coke is at passover time. Look for the bottles with the yellow caps, they have real sugar because HFCS (or corn in general) isn't kosher for passover.

I ran into this interesting little blurb today.

Dr Pepper was first served around 1885 at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas. The drink was created by Charles Alderton in an effort to capture the fruity and syrupy smells wafting through the store. Though Dr Pepper was initially served cold, the drink was briefly marketed as a warm beverage, a plan that was developed to ensure the brand’s continued popularity throughout the colder holiday months.

Hot Dr Pepper was first conceived of in 1958, when company president Wesby Parker found inspiration while visiting a bottling plant during a blizzard. The result was a new recipe developed by the company that encouraged consumers to heat Dr Pepper over a stovetop to 180 degrees and then pour it over a thin slice of lemon. The drink was marketed in ads using taglines such as “Devilishly Different” and “Winter Warmer,” and an alcoholic version containing rum, called the Schuss-Boomer, was later popularized. Hot Dr Pepper remained a beloved holiday drink into the 1970s, and though it has since faded in popularity, the beverage continues to be made each year by certain pockets of loyal fans.

Interesting. Clearly the WoW is the reason they don't serve it hot anymore. ;-)

Now they have me interested about what it would taste like. Might not be bad with the rum in it.

No sugar tonight in my coffee. No sugar tonight in my tea. No sugar to stand beside me. No sugar to run with me.

I love that song. I must have listened to it a hundred times.

You weren't supposed to know that song. *LOL*

I knew it too. Greatest hits album, maybe the early 1970s.

I've referred to it by describing one of our fly-by-night posters as "bus rider."

Same era as Robin Trower, I believe!

The song pre-dated Robin Trower.

Na-uh!

Just looked it up. Trower was playing for Procol Harum from 1967 and No Sugar Tonight debuted in 1970.

[Thanks, Google!]

I'm talking about when Robin was solo and doing his blues-rock thing but if you are talking Procol you are correct.

I prefer his solo stuff too.

Robin who?

Wow, you guys are old! :P

Only dagny.