Mexican Coke and the Environment

I took this picture in rural Idaho, which pretty much means Mexican Coke is everywhere now. Mexican Coke differs from American Coke in its main ingredient: sugar. The Mexican version uses sugar cane. The American, high fructose corn syrup. For that reason lots of folks prefer it, if not for its flavor then for its environmental impact. The corn for the corn syrup is grown with the use of fossil-fuel intensive pesticides and fertilizers whose run-off causes groundwater pollution.

On the other hand Mexican Coke is shipped in heavy glass bottles thousands of miles. The American Coke usually ships in lightweight plastic bottles or cans and rarely travels more than a few dozen miles since bottlers are located close to where they sell. It makes me wonder if there's a net environmental difference in the end?

I also wonder if the suits at Coke are sitting back in Hotlanta scratching their heads and counting their money as sugar fans do all this work, essentially creating a new brand of Coke for them. 

More on corn syrup and sugar here, here and here.

Is Corn Syrup Evil?

In the latest Zingerman's catalog I wrote a piece about traditional uses of corn syurp in candy making. The full article is below.

If you'd like to learn more about the chemistry of sugars, here's a piece by Marion Nestle. Among many other things, she is the author of What to Eat, a book in that caught my eye for the simple but insightful observation that food around the edges of supermarkets is much less processed than that in the middle aisles.

How did it come to be that American companies find it profitable to turn corn into sugar instead of using actual sugar? I wrote some basics about the crazy economics in this post.

Is Corn Syrup Evil?

Poor corn.

Sometimes I feel sorry for the vegetable. It’s been the subject of exposés putting it at the center of America’s industrial food problems, including obesity and diabetes. In Michael Pollan’s (highly recommended) Omnivore’s Dilemma and the movie it inspired, King Corn, it’s nearly criminal.

Corn-derived products have also felt the bad rap, in particular corn syrup. Does it deserve it? Like most food villains, there's some truth to the complaints. But, like in a lot of debates, things are never quite as black and white as they seem.

On the negative side, corn has benefitted from specific agricultural subsidies encouraging its production and others that restricted trade on substitutes, most importantly cane sugar. The limits raised the price—up to the point where it makes sense to create the more expensive industrial high fructose corn syrup on a large scale. Most aspects of industrial corn syrup—from growing to refining—are fossil fuel intensive.

On the positive side, though, corn syrup has been a part of American culinary history since at least around the time of the Civil War. It’s been used in moderate amounts in all kinds of dishes. Most important to us, candy makers have long used the special properties of corn syrup to control sugar crystallization. If you want to keep a candy soft and gooey, corn syrup is great.

For example, corn syrup gives caramel its texture. The other sugars and dairy give the caramel its flavor. The chemical reaction that breaks down corn’s polysaccharide carbohydrate into sugar’s monosaccharide glucose is relatively simple. The main ingredient is water. Once made, corn syrup is not as sweet as refined sugar (though the high fructose version is much sweeter).

Larger concerns aside, at Zingerman’s, we don’t think corn syrup is entirely evil. Corn syrup is not the primary sweetener at Zingerman’s Candy Manufactory but it is used. Charlie, the candy maker, also sweetens his candy bars with raw honey, traditional muscovado brown sugar, maple sugar and regular old granulated cane sugar. Each one contributes to the texture and flavor of his finished candy.

Cane sugar is a "throwback."

Today NPR had a piece on the new "throwback" Pepsi and Mountain Dew sodas. They're soft drinks made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup. Supposedly they taste better — a little less sweet.

Cane sugar sodas have been a cult thing for some time. I think it was six or seven years ago the first time I heard someone say "I buy  imported Mexican Coke in glass bottles," Mexico being a place where they still make soft drinks with cane sugar. In fact, I'm pretty sure the entire world makes soft drinks with cane sugar. The U.S. did, too, up until the 1970's.

What happened then?

In the 1970s, as part of a new agricultural policy, the federal government placed tariffs on imported sugar and subsidies on corn. Since most of our cane sugar was imported, it promptly got very expsnive. Corn, now subsidized, got cheap. Corn can be turned into sugar, but it's usually a lot more expensive than just buying cane sugar. That's why the rest of the world uses cane. But when corn syrup became cheaper in the U.S., soda makers — along with lots of other food manufacturers — switched. (While we use cane sugar in most of our foods, you'll often find others baking with corn syrup because it's cheaper.)

That simple market distortion — a tariff here, a subsidy there — has created a lot of strange effects. We now grow corn across the Midwest, much of it for sugar production. Compared to cane sugar, manufacturing sugar from corn creates a lot more pollution and uses more oil. Meanwhile, the countries that grow cane sugar — primarily poor economies in Central America and Africa — can't sell us what they make. Their sugar would travel further, but it would be made with far less pollution. It would also taste better. (This is a good example of how going "local" can get very complex very quickly.)

If you're interested in the strange tale of corn in America I highly recommend Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and the documentary it inspired, King Corn.