President Donald Trump — who reportedly drinks up to 12 cans of Diet Coke a day — said Wednesday that beverage giant Coca-Cola had agreed to use real cane sugar in its regular Coke.
“This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!” Trump wrote in a Wednesday post on his Truth Social platform.
The company said in a statement that it had appreciated the president’s enthusiasm for the brand and that more details on “new innovative offerings within [the] Coca‑Cola product range [would] be shared soon.”
Coca-Cola is the best-selling carbonated soft drink in the U.S. Right now, Coke in the U.S. is made with high-fructose corn syrup to give it its sweet, fizzy taste. The sweetener is made from corn starch. Cane sugar is made from sugarcane, the tall, bamboo-like stalks known for their high sucrose content, and is used as the sweetener in Coke in most countries.
But, is one healthier than the other? Here’s what to know…
Experts say cane sugar is not necessarily healthier
The experts say it likely won’t matter which sweetener is in Coke.
Corn syrup has slightly more fructose than table sugar, or glucose. Fructose doesn’t prompt the body to produce insulin, which triggers a hormone that helps us to feel full.
“Our bodies aren’t going to know if that’s cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. We just know that it is sugar and we need to break that down,” Caroline Susie, a registered dietitian nutritionist and a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, told Health.
Consuming an excessive amount of any refined sugar can lead to a higher risk of weight gain and associated chronic conditions, such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
“Both high-fructose corn syrup and cane sugar are about 50 percent fructose, 50 percent glucose, and have identical metabolic effects,” Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, told NBC News.
Soda is soda
America has a sugar habit — and a penchant for ultra-processed foods — that it needs to kick, according to Mozaffarian.
Soda has more than the daily recommended limit for added sugars for teens and children. Added sugar refers to sugars and syrups that are added to foods and beverages during processing and production.
“It’s always better to cut down on soda, no matter what the form of sugar is,” Dr. Melanie Jay, a professor of medicine and population health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and director of the NYU Langone Comprehensive Program on Obesity Research, told NBC News.
There’s pushback
Coke sold in the U.S. has been made with high fructose corn syrup since the mid-1980s. Corn was a cheaper option than cane sugar: the U.S. has a lot of corn farmers and the government has long supported the industry.
Other countries, including Mexico and Australia, still use cane sugar. The company has imported glass bottles of Mexican Coke to the U.S. since 2005.
Corn is the nation’s number one crop, and the Corn Refiners Association President and CEO John Bode said in a statement that replacing high fructose corn syrup with cane sugar “doesn’t make sense.”
“President Trump stands for American manufacturing jobs, American farmers, and reducing the trade deficit,” he said. “Replacing high fructose corn syrup with cane sugar would cost thousands of American food manufacturing jobs, depress farm income, and boost imports of foreign sugar, all with no nutritional benefit.”
He toldThe Washington Post that it would be more economical to introduce a product with cane sugar than to abandon the cheap and popular high-fructose corn syrup.
With reporting from The Associated Press
