Post #342780 by The Gnomon on Thu, Nov 8, 2007 1:04 PM

On 2007-11-07 11:34, Scottes wrote:
I have been on a serious rant against HFCS lately. Everything I buy at the store gets checked now. And I've been hunting down sodas and mixers made with cane sugar and natural flavors. Even the worst of these is still better than the crap made with HFCS. Though they are generally a lot more expensive due to them being made by small-batch brewers.

Amazingly, so far my favorite is Polar's Vanilla Cream Soda. But I guess they make 2 kinds, one with HFCS and one with cane sugar. The cane sugar one is the best I've found, and I've tried 7 or 8 different vanilla cream sodas made with cane sugar (and 0 with HFCS). I have, so far, collected 4 different ginger ales made with cane sugar and one of these nights I'm going to do a taste test and compare them to Schweppes, Canada Dry, and Seagrams.

Life is too short to drink HFCS. Blech.

Grrrrrrrr! Don't get me started!

Too late.

Back in the 50's and early 60's Coke tasted like Coke, Dr. Pepper (my favorite) tasted like Dr. Pepper, and Squirt (close second) tasted like Squirt. Now they all suck.

I remember when the news came out that they were going to change the formula for Coke. It didn't mean anything to me then, but when they switched to HFCS the difference was like daydream and nightmare. I didn't realize until many years later that they had replaced the sugar with HFCS to cut costs. They also messed with other parts of the formula, rendering their new drink a cola product that didn't taste anything like Coca-Cola, but had the legal rights to be peddled under that name.

As far as I know, Coke was the first to go that route. I suppose that the other soda companies followed suit when they realized that Coke was still making money hand over fist even though the quality of the soda declined drastically. If Coke could get away with it, why not them, too. All of the sodas got ruined that way. All seem to have altered their formulas in other ways as well.

We have a lot of international supermarkets around here, some with huge Hispanic sections. There you can get Coke, Pepsi, Squirt, and other sodas made in Mexico. Unfortunately, even though they have sugar instead of HFCS, their formulae have changed to the point that they still don't taste anything like (or nearly as good as) the way they were in the 50's and 60's. Even so, it's better than having to put up with HFCS.

When I first started buying Mexican soda, I was hoping that the original flavors would be retained. I remember in the 60's and 70's long after they stopped making "real" Coca-Cola in the US, when I was living in and traveling throughout parts of South (Colombia and Venezuela) and Central (Panamá) America the Coke there still tasted like "real" Real Thing. The Mexican version tastes like the US version except for the sugar. It makes me wonder if in other parts of Latin America where they have independent Coca-Cola enterprises and factories one might be able to find soda with the formulae used 5 decades ago.

There is also a Mexican version of Squirt, but it doesn't taste anything like "real" Squirt. It is in the same boat with their Coca-Cola. Fortunately, there is a Squirt substitute that tastes pretty much exsactly like "real" Squirt. That substitute is Ting from Jamaica.