There's something odd going on in the refrigerator case at my local Market Basket.
Next to the express lanes, on the bottom shelf, a row of bottles looks out of place.
They are made out of glass, not plastic. They contain 355 milliliters, not 12 ounces. And the writing on the label is in Spanish.
This is the Mexican Coke.
I know that sounds bad, and truthfully, there is something illicit about bringing home the sweet nectar. We try to limit our soda consumption. It really isn’t very good for you, and empty calories are never good.
But the Coca-Cola imported from Mexico in those iconic glass bottles just tastes better. It might be the bottle, but cola enthusiasts insist it’s the sugar.
Coke bottled in Mexico, at least that intended for export to the U.S., is sweetened with cane sugar. Most of the soda we produce domestically is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS.)
The market for cane sugar soda in the U.S., has sparked a nasty trade dispute. HFCS is really cheap, in part because of the massive subsidies the federal government has given to farmers since the Nixon administration to grow as much corn as possible.
Mexico keeps trying to tax HFCS imports from the U.S. so that its cane sugar can compete. And we keep going to the World Trade Organization.
It’s much like the ongoing dispute we have with Canada over subsidies for its softwood lumber harvesters, which I detailed earlier this month (Rising up against the Canadian Peril, May 2.) Except now, we’re on the other side.
The dispute over Mexican Coke is just one sliver of a national sugar policy that is simply bonkers. We spend billions on a policy that makes some food more expensive, and makes junk food a lot cheaper.
American farmers produce so much corn that HFCS is cheap enough to put into just about every type of processed food. There’s no evidence that HFCS is less healthy than other forms of sugar, but we end up eating a lot more of it.
Source: www.unionleader.com