Can you REALLY taste High Fructose Corn Syrup? | How to Drink
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- Опубликовано: 11 май 2024
- Lots of you thought I should be able to taste the difference between real sugar and high fructose corn syrup so today I am putting that to the test with my new blind taste tester!
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00:00 - Sugar show down
02:24 - Blind taste testing machine
03:15 - Real sugar sodas
04:15 - Real sugar vs HFCS
06:08 - Coca Cola taste test
08:57 - Dr Pepper taste test
11:10 - Pepsi taste test
14:00 - Soda water final test
15:55 - Conclusions
16:40 - Thanks for watching!
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I found this whole blind taste test to be hugely surprising, and fun to do! Now that I've got a little blind testing rig, what else should I test?
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I love sugar taste testing c: my favorite is sucralose, but splitting it with another type of sugar always gives a more complex sweet
it kinda makes sense that you can't *really* distinguish the sugars, but absolutely can taste the difference with the coke. I would NOT be surprised if they added something specifically to make the "new, but old formula with real sugar" version taste a little different so customers feel valid and buy more
Very informative video honestly. I'd like to see a gin blind taste test.
It is time for you to partner with brulosophy!!
They do exBeeriments to test out if changes in home brewing beer changes the flavor and if people can detect the changes
Example - the industry standard for detecting changes involves 3 cups. 2 of A and 1 of B. In addition to eating your preference, you have to be able to say which of the three is different
I find cane sugar sodas to be far sweeter.
Seeing a lot of comments so stopping by to say “Hi” and that I’m still here and still working on HTD with Greg. My wife and I had our baby on Dec 29th and have been enjoying time with our new little one. She’s amazing 😊.
Came to the comments to ask about this specifically. Glad to hear everything's going well, and congratulations!
Congratulations to both of you!! ❤
Glad everythings good and you're not in the videos for a positive reason :)
Congratulations! And glad to hear it, I know I've been missing your active presence in the show. Best wishes to you and your family!
Thank you for updating us, I've missed you
Something that food youtuber Ethan Chlebowski does in his blind tests is a "triangle test". Make 2 glasses of 2 drinks, shuffle them, throw one out, and taste the remaining three; then try to identify the odd one out of the three you tasted.
I was gonna recommend this as well.
That's super smart, I'm definitely going to think about how to incorporate that kind of thing in the future
I was about to suggest the same. Much better at actually determining if you are truly detecting a subtle difference
@@howtodrinkyou could call it Odd Man(hattan) Out.
@@howtodrinkpour 4 glasses, do the shuffle (and shuffle the glasses too!), put straws in 3. That's the easiest way.
What this episode showed me is that “drunk Greg” is not actually drunk…he’s reacting to the sugar and not the alcohol LOL
I was a process develop engineer in the food industry for years. A quick skinny on HFCS42: it's not actually sweater or as sweet as straight granulated sugar. The reason we use it is two fold: it's significantly cheaper even though you have to use more, and its significantly easier to use because it's a liquid (thus pumped, not deposited, and can be measured by volume, not mass (as a fluidizes bed will flow different than say just a bulk drop)) The only times you use granulated sugar is either if 1) the customer specifically wants (and pays for) it, 2) you need the bulking aspect of sugar (common in say cookies or cakes).
Also in the US, any phrase containing words "syrup" or "honey" on ingredients label are disguises for Fructose syurp. It means either high percentage of HFCS or imported "Rice Syrup" (commonly from China), which usually contains high percentage of artificial HFCS + heavy metals. On top of that, depending on the item Food Fraud is extremely common in the US, meaning that "100% Agave Syrup" you grabbed from top shelf has a possibility of fructose syrup being mixed into it, unless it was third party tested and verified otherwise.
@@lars2894 I've seen this rumor posted before but all I can say is in my years of experience I've never been party to it being done. If a recipe had honey in it, then it had honey in it. What I think a lot of non-manufacturing people don't realize is that honey comes in a dry, granulated form, and that, that is how it is utilized in industrial foods, not the 'syrup' honey you're more used to seeing in like, real life.
For example, many breads use honey as a sweetener: every code I've ever seen does in fact use real honey, it just used granulated honey, and whatever excess hydration level added to ensure appealing texture.
As a general rule, if it's on the ingredient deck, we have to ACTUALLY use that in the food. The only real exceptions are things found under "Natural" or "Artificial" flavors, which can be almost anything as it it allows us to hide our flavoring recipes to allow us to have a trade secret. And as far as ingredients being in, and not being on the deck, only 'non-functional' ingredients are allowed to be hidden.
For example, most bread codes, when it's being dumped from the mixer into the chucker, get sprayed with mineral oil, just to essentially act as lubricant for those processes: that does not need to show up on the label as it's per-unit mass contribution is negligible, and it exists PURELY as a process aid, not as a functional ingredient (like say, yeast, sugar, inclusions, ect) in the food.
Another thing I think most people dont know, is the ingredient deck order, matters. The higher it is in the deck, the more, by mass, that item is present.
But as far as being whats on the label vs. reality: it's almost in all cases 100% accurate as the FDA actually *does* require that to be truthful. Where shenanagans happen is more in language and standards of definition. For example, "Chocolate", and "Chocolaty", are LEGALLY, *very* different things.
In the US Chocolate *HAS* to meet certain weight restrictions in composition ingredients. If something is labeled milk chocolate, or Dark chocolate, or semi/bitter sweet chocolate, then, legally, it *has* to conform to specific mass-by-part requirements, but 'chocolaty'? That is a meaningless term. I can slap that on a product that contains *0* coca. It has no legal definition.
But if I say there's cocoa in the ingredient *deck*, then it *must* contain that.
@@Rangercaptain1138 Good read. Its great seeing someone speak from experience and education on a subject online and address misconception and rumors. In this great era of the internet often when reading information online that information is often from secondary sources which can help misconstrued information and create some wild theories, misconceptions and rumors about things.
@ihswap I cannot comment on things outside my lane, but I find when it comes to industrial foods, there is very very little accurate information out there and honestly I think that's cause there's not actually a lot of people who do what I do. I'm not exaggerating when I say, world wide, there's only a few thousand industrial process engineers (in the food industry), spread over a wide variety of foods that are vastly different in production process (making bread is vastly different than making soup for example) and very few have both an engineering understanding of the underlying processes (for example why you select the sequence of rollers for reducing a sheeted dough) *and* the actual understanding of the food itself as a product people eat (Many food engineers have little to no practical culinary or food stuff training). I happen to have both so I both understand the process and why the food is the way it is (I worked in R&D).
At any rate, the understandings of industrial foods are by and large little to none, even by people who work in the industry, much less by idle observers.
There are different grades of hcfs. Like hcfs60 vs 42. Also “real sugar” (glucose) may also be used in granulated form to eliminate possibility of old or musty flavor from beets processed after being stored for a while. When we taste products in the lab at work samples are brought to room temp at least because it’s easier to detect off flavors/odors that way.
I love how greg is slowly branching out into not just alcohol but Drinks in general.
Very based profile pic brother
His liver thanks him for that I'm sure
I very much agree. I think Greg has done this long enough, that there are only so many new things you can do. I love that this adds a huge branch out point for the channel
@@AlluradeIt was actually his liver’s idea.
Soft drinks are just hard drinks with out booze
You should make an Old Fashioned, in one use your normal simple syrup and the other use HFCS. The only real way to tell the difference. Make a few sweet cocktail's with both.
That's a fun idea, I still have that jug so maybe
@@howtodrink No idea what else you intend to do with that gallon jug. 😂
@@howtodrink yeah, the logical extension of this is definitely a video with like your top 3 drinks with the simple replaced. I feel like some ingredients must react differently to the different chemical structures.
I was going to suggest the same thing!!
@@howtodrink Old Fashioned, Daiquri, and a Gimlet are probably the way to go with that I think?
Well, now that you have a blind taste rig, _and_ you started it with sodas, I want to see a couple of the classics: Glass bottle vs Aluminum can vs Plastic bottle, and also the "brand wars" where you pit Coke and Pepsi and RC and various store brands against each other. And every time you have a guest on the show you should get them to try a different blind taste thing, so you can get more fun collab stuff in!
idk if the brand wars on cola between coke and Pepsi is actually viable. They each actually have significant differences in recipe that's very clear. Coke especially is very high in spices. I haven't had a soda in a long while, but iirc, coke even has cinnamon? Pepsi at least doesn't taste like spices from what I recall. As for rc-cola, I don't think I've had an rc- cola in like 20 years, so I can't even comment on that one. But my soda drinking friends and those who get it with jack at cheap bars seem to like it, and I don't think they could tell the difference between it and Pepsi
Eh, cans are really just extremely thin plastic bottles coated with a thick layer of metal, usually aluminum. You never taste the metal. However plastic bottled sodas are typically pressurized much much higher than those in glass or cans because of the high gas transmission rates of plastic, which is essentially zero in glass and metal. In order to last longer on the shelf, they jack up the carbonation to compensate. So you will taste/feel the difference in higher carbonation.
As a stickler for soda, I think you hit the nail on the head with the other ingredients being the main factor. I always kinda assumed that given that international food brands do that kind of thing all the time, good to know I wasn't crazy to think slightly different recipes are used in different places.
Hello! Mexican here,
It's been quite done time since Mexican Coca Cola is no longer made 100% with sugar cane. Furthermore, the Coca Cola formula has a slight variations according to the region where the soda was bottled; in some regions the soda taste sweeter, it some others it has more frizz. The father of an ex girlfriend worked in Coca Cola, that's how I know.
Also I’ve seen a couple of videos explaining how laws differ when importing so they can mislead people by saying it’s sugar on the labels when it’s actually HFCS.
Yup. A study of like a dozen different soda's that included Mexican coke found only glucose and fructose (corn syrup) and no sucrose (cane/beet sugar) in any of them
There is, however, a Mexican Cola (not Coca Cola) that still uses cane sugar (and is exported), and I tried it once. It tasted a *lot* better than Coke. Unfortunately my ADHD is crap with names, so I can't remember what it's called.
Sorry but theres two Mexican cokes. One if made with high fructose and has a slightly different label. There's also a Mexican coke made with cane sugar that has the classic all red label but says bottled in Mexico on the bottle.
Wrong. There's two formulas in Mexico. The domestic formula not-for-export is HFCS. The export-only is 100% cane sugar. You should really educate yourself before spewing nonsense on the internet. I'm not even Mexican and I know this, so you have no excuse.
I feel like an amaro smackdown would be awesome. There are so so many and I never know which ones are worth buying
Yes, I get dizzy looking at amaros.
It's not even about which ones are worth buying, they're all mostly worth the money, but they're highly divisive. I love Campari, many can't stand it, most people love Aperol, I think it's too sweet and too weak.
This is why i have always been a fan of the show. Greg really does the tedious thinking and planning for each episode. The amount of effort to be as honest and real as possible is appreciated.
Hi Greg,
the "HFCS 45" has 45% fructose in dry-mass. But it is still solved in water.
A refractometer does not differentiate between succrose, maltose, glucose or fructose. They are also used on fluids containing inverted or multiple sugars.
Maybe your 2:1 simple is just denser.
It says on the bottle it is 42%, would that still make a difference?
If he was measuring the solution with carbonated water then the CO2 would throw the reading off
All HFCS is 24% water, and "HFCS 42" means it's 42% fructose if this water is excluded, so the composition is about 24% water, 32% fructose, 44% glucose. It's closer to 3:1 syrup
Thank you for reminding us that HFCS contains water. As soon as he said 100% sugar I was running to the comments.
Blind taste tests are so cool. They really drive home how much of our perception of flavour is psychological.
Which I don't think is a detriment, it's liberating to know when I host a dinner party, the food only has to be so good before it doesn't really matter, and that how guests feel and perceive becomes much more important.
People eat with their eyes first, which is why plating and presentation can make something "taste" better than it legitimately is.
My favorite YT example of this is Glen over at Glen and Friends Cooking, who is a life long coke drinker, did a blind test with a bunch of different colas and settled on Pepsi as his favorite and regular coke as one of his least favorite.
@@SweetChuckPi This can be true but I've known people, myself included, who can easily tell the difference between soda's like that in blind taste tests. Pepsi, around me, is just sickeningly sweet compared to Coke whether you know it's in the glass or not. It's terrible and easy to tell when you go to a restaurant and ask for a specific soft drink and you get something completely different without them telling you. "I'd like a Coke." then they bring you a Pepsi or "I'd like a Dr. Pepper" and they bring you Mr. Pib etc.
And for the cheap skates you only need to buy expensive wine once. Plenty of studies show even pros prefer cheap wine from expensive bottles over expensive wine in cheap bottles.
@@attaug Weird, when I tried it I found coke to be way sweeter but with a more complex flavour while Pepsi was less sweet but only had the single flavour of cola. But I def agree anyone should be able to tell the difference between them. ANd DONT fricken bring me Mr Pibb... GRRRR
Loved the episode. If you could, look into the triangle test. It's less about deciding which is which, and is more about CAN you tell a difference. It helps to eliminate/identify bias.
Would that be testing 2 of one and 1 that’s different and trying to pick out the one that’s different? That’s what I thought he was going to do at the beginning.
@@billsedutto8824 Yes, James Hoffmann does triangle tests in some of his coffee videos. That method helps assure that you can REALLY identify a difference. With only two samples you could just be guessing randomly and still be correct half of the time.
I'm curious as to how you do that with a single person, because you could always know which is the two and which has one since you did all the pouring. Maybe make two of each and only test 3?
@@maromania7 The same way he did it in the video except you have 3 glasses instead of two.
@@maromania7 I think you have the right idea there - mix 2 of each, put the 4 glasses under the cover, spin, then put 3 straws in randomly.
Fun fact about Coca Cola in Europe: even though different countries use the same base sirup (sugar and flavour), they dilute it with local water, so there are subtle differences in flavour
Mountain Dew also has an all-sugar version called Throwback, and compared to the HFCS one, it's not terribly different, especially chilled.
You CAN tell the difference, but it's slight, and has more to do with the texture of the drink and how the sweetness interacts with the citric acid and mouth-feel of the carbonation than the sweetness itself.
The nitro creaminess is a great analogy.
The HFCS version I get a more sharper taste to it while the RS version I get a slightly more smoother taste from it.
I have to say, I much prefer the UK version of MTN Dew. They call it citrus blast, but it's the same as US regular only less artificial yellow and not as sweet, even though it's made with cane sugar.
Did yawl do it blind when making the comparison? Bias and placebo effect is not something you can just will away in most cases. Of course if you enjoy one more than the other it may be worth it to just foster preconceived notions instead of learning truth.
@@flyingsodwai1382 I have training as a sommelier. I don't need blind taste tests to eliminate my biases, but I do need a dab of wasabi to shock my taste buds between extremely similar flavors.
I love how Greg made the video in response to the "real sugar vs HFCS" myth, and his first taste test already pins a canned soda vs a glass bottle soda, which is IMO an even bigger myth/conspiracy among the soda enthusiasts
All those comparisions are fucked no matter how one spins them because apparently every single way they get packaged gets argued to be different.
@@emetanti I can confirm though that a glass bottle tastes dramatically different from an aluminium can with regards to the contents, at least to me. It's also true that glass is non-reactive, but aluminium can react with the contents.
@@Feynt It could also be a "clear vs. opaque container" thing. It's also possible that in glass vs. plastic, plastic loses a little more carbonation than glass does, but it might just be the feeling of the containers that alters the experience. I definitely like glass bottles best, but I'm fully willing to accept it's just because drinking out of glass feels better. We may never know for sure.
@@Feynt People forget the cans have a lining in them, the soda isnt in direct contact with the Aluminium, theres some differences in how much carbonation is used though.
@@Feynt the aluminum cannot react to the contents. It has a coating on it that prevents the liquid from contacting the metal. If it wasn't there your cans of soda or anything else would taste extremely metallic.
I'm diggin' that blind taste test rig!!!
I hope you two collab someday, you're relatively close geographically after all!
He could have made it double blind if he had somebody else spin it in a different room and get rid of any slight chance of bias
I love your repurposing of the cake carrier! It's so smart! I look forward to more uses of it.
Episodes like this is why i love your channel...awesome tests man and love your sense of humor!
So to make blind taste tests like this more accurate, normally what happens is a Triangle test; 2 of one type, 1 of the other, but without knowing which one is the odd one out, and if you can't identify the odd one out then you know any deifferences are in your mind, so like what happened with your pepsi test
I was coming to say the same
There probably was an initial difference in the Pepsi, but it appears to have been the carbonation leveling out.
It also does not work in a taste test if you have no palette cleanser between them to ensure you are not keeping residual flavors from the last thing you ate/drank on your taste buds. And Coca Cola is notoriously bad for testing because he isn't even accounting for the temperature of the drink, that plays a major factor in how the beverage tastes.
SHOUT OUT TO THE GREEN ROOM GOBLINS!
I appreciate all the work you put into this episode. Shoutout to your patrons who helped you with research. This was very interesting and fun!
Hey Greg, I was at the store and was thinking to myself, I really wish Greg had a cocktail book. Now I know I could write em down, but after a while of watching you, i've finally gotten the tools to do the mixin. And me being me, I haven't written any of the recipes down. I'm going to start doing that from here on for sure. But if you ever do a book... i'm buying 😂
HEre from Twitch, I remember you mentioning on twitch about HFCS, so excited for this.
One thing I have found is that something with HFCS will feel like it coats my mouth more, which could throw off some findings. Using a plain seltzer water or something to rinse your palette between tasting is probably useful in situations like this.
Anecdotally, I remember as a kid drinking a "Throwback" Mountain Dew with cane sugar and then reaching for can of regular Mountain Dew immediately afterward and I remember it having a much much thicker mouth feel, but not more or less sweet.
YES! THIS! Just left a very similar comment.
It depends on which throwback Mountain Dew you had. The first run, for example, did not not orange concentrate in it, which mountain dew has had in it since Pepsi added it not long after they bought Mountain Dew's rights. (Lots of history there.)
Also those PepsiCo "real sugar" drinks aren't currently made with cane sugar. It's part cane sugar and part beet sugar. It's had to tell of the earlier runs of throwback mountain dew were beet sugar or not since they only promised that they were made with "real sugar" and not specifically sugar cane, but they likely were using beet sugar.
But anyway, regardless, the different recipes are probably the reason for the differences.
This is the difference I sense in sucrose vs HFCS products. For me it's usually the mouthfeel, not the taste. I also tend to prefer the formula changes that comes with the sucrose variants.
Most likely it's the preservatives that are doing that. The versions with sugar don't need preservatives.
@@Furluge FWIW, cane sugar vs beet sugar makes little difference, it's the same sugar (sucrose).
I have a strong preference for sugar cane over HFCS so if they do taste the same then there must be another change happening in the recipes for soda each time sugar cane is used.
Bias possibly. Placebo effect has been shown to stay active even after people are told its placebo effect. Human brains are just broken on some levels.
For me it's the texture of the hfcs recipe is much thicker than regular sugar. Hfcs leaves a coating that sugar doesn't really do
Loving that Remarkable tablet. Very cool toy, I honestly find it to be very useful at work, and fun to use at home.
It makes sense that they taste so similar. Sucrose is a combination of 1 glucose and 1 fructose
I love what you've done here, well done sir!!!! Love people who just tell their unbiased opinions!
I love the possibilities blind taste testing opens up! Especially comparing different brands of alcohol or cocktails where the only difference is which brand of base spirit you used. Great ep! Glad to see someone putting this myth to the test
I'd be curious how much the dome is blocking the smell, and how much that affects that ability to tell the difference.
But that mimics the way many of these drinks are consumed: out of a sealed cup with a straw or out of a vvessel that is sealed by your mouth while drinking. Anyways, the aroma should get into your nose via the back of your throat no problem.
I recall a serious eats study where people preferred corn syrup coke blind, but would choose the Mexican coke if they were told it was Mexican. The funny thing is they would choose what they were told was Mexican, regardless of what the sample actually was.
Wonder if it's cultural. Like we get conditioned to think the soda of our childhood is the right taste. Seen so many people say that sodas from some other country are down right undrinkable.
@@johku7638 Except in the case of Coke, people think that Mexican Coke is superior to American because they're told the recipe is better. My mom used to go out of her way to get it even though she's not even remotely Mexican.
@@johku7638 oh as far as why they chose the American coke blind it’s very likely because they were American . This comes up a lot in taste tests where what is the most familiar wins.
To be clear the conclusion is not American coke is superior, just that Americans like the idea of drinking Mexican coke more than the actual taste of it .
That sounds like people.
Ironically, that's how New Coke died. New Coke won in every single blind taste test, hands down, but the public absolutely threw a hissy fit until New Coke was pulled and Classic Coke was brought back.
this was really fun to watch, super interesting to see you branch out into these niche science experiments
Thank you for doing this test. I've wanted (someone) to do the same test for a long time.
Hi Greg, great video! One thing that wasn't controlled for with the Coke is the container (can vs. bottle) I think that could impart a difference, especially with the carbonation. Can't wait to see what else you use the solo-blind-testerator for!
Yeah they definitely impart a flavor. How long they sit on the shelf too, and how they were stored.
I seen people do blind taste tests. They all say they love glass, but time after time effin aluminum cans won.
I found that hilarious, because one video especially had people who were adamant about that.
Also in blind taste tests for water I have seen. Tap water a lot of times ranked high. Yet where that tap is coming from matters a lot.
Anyway placebo plays a huge part too.
I love the Sunset Sarsaparilla in the set dressing lol good callback
I love how to drink and I have learned so much on how to create great cocktails from you! I do have a non drink related question however. What tablet were you using to write down your notes. Sorry that's just the IT side of me that's curious. Love your show Greg keep up the great work!
This was super informative! I moved from Canada to the UK around 8-9 years ago and I 100% prefer the soda over here. I thought it was because they don't use HFCS but I guess it's just the difference in recipe!
I'm sure 1,000 other people are going to say the same thing, but "Sucrose" is also nearly a 50/50 combo of fructose and glucose.
One thing to note, the 42% concentration you used is primarily used in baking, while soft drink companies tend to use 55%
Does that make a difference? I'd wager probably not, but it is a consideration
Well, I think that's a little misleading, but still exactly the reason why there's no perceptible difference. A sucrose molecule consists of a fructose and and glucose unit linked together, and in an acidic environment it hydrolyzes into a unit of fructose and a unit of glucose. So yes, I think the difference is just whether the ratio of fructose to glucose is 50/50 or for example 42/58 or 55/45.
The concentration is about the dilution in water in the jug, not the ratio of fructose and glucose, which is always 55% 45% in HFCS versus the 50/50 of sucrose (which is why they really aren't that different despite all the claims)
@@vlogerhood No, HFCS 42 is pretty common and it indeed is 42% fructose by dry weight as opposed to HFCS 55 which is 55% fructose by dey weight.
For anyone who doesn't know, I did some research a while back on why HFCS is "bad" and the answer is surprisingly simple and makes a lot of sense. The sweetness in normal corn syrup comes from a 50-50 ratio of fructose and glucose molecules bonded together; high-fructose corn syrup, meanwhile is 52% fructose and 48% glucose, and the molecules are unbonded. The tiny tip of the scales in favour of fructose in the ratio really has nothing to do with the equation, it's the bonding that matters. With normal 50/50 corn syrup, your body has to work to break down that bond in order to digest it, meaning you're burning some calories to receive some calories. With HFCS, because the molecules are already unbonded, your body doesn't have to put any effort into digesting it, so it's a higher net influx of calories compared to an equivalent consumption of normal corn syrup. This is why high rates of consumption of HFCS are linked with obesity and other health problems, because it's basically free empty calories, where your body would otherwise have to work to digest its intake.
Full transparency: I don't know how this relates to cane sugar made of sucrose, or if a similar process of burning calories to earn calories is involved, I am specifically clarifying how high-fructose corn syrup is distinct from normal corn syrup. (I also don't know why we couldn't just use corn syrup where we already use HFCS-I would imagine it's less work, and thus less cost, to produce a healthier end product.)
When my food allergies started when I was 29, I started reacting badly to HFVS. It makes my stomach feel like the Xenomorph was popping out of it. Then, I'd spend an hour on the loo. I avoid it, aspartame and the other zero calorie sweeteners.
This was a fun episode! Would love to see more
Love love love the music on your videos!! Content also don’t get me wrong but the music just puts it in a great place
I've been doing some R&D for a soft drink I'm trying to get to a bottling plant and I too need to do solo blind taste tests. I'm using a table built off of Deviant Ollam's tasting table design. With that one, you have spaces for glasses and there's a divot by each one. You place a token with a letter in the divot, letter face down, after marking on a sheet of paper mark which token goes to which. Then you give it a spin then add number tokens, face up, randomly in the divot. So this means you can go back and forth, you can make notes about what #7 is or whatever, without knowing what's what until the end, but it's very hard to get things backwards. Your design is interesting since it lets you compare visually different items easier, but can make things harder when doing more than a few items at a time, if you have say 8 items I can see potential for confusion if you run out of straw colors. Have to appreciate the ingenuity though.
And for the record I'm using actual sugar, not because I was able to taste a difference but rather just so people would leave it alone. Did test HFCS and as long as you match the sugar content rather than volume I couldn't identify a difference. But some people read the label and decide if they'll like it before tasting it and I didn't want to have the listen to them.
I have been avoiding HFCS for a few years, and it’s not a flavor issue/difference. Let me know if anyone has noticed texture differences. HFCS sodas usually feel sticky in my mouth, sugar, aspartame, and other options don’t have that sensation. Living abroad has helped, as other countries. have banned the use of HFCS. The fact that it is banned should say something as well.
@@prufrock1977 , HFCS is not banned anywhere in the world. It is highly regulated in some places, but those are not necessarily for health-related reasons.
@@prufrock1977 I'm with you on that. HFCS based sodas feel like they leave a syrupy feel in the mouth that the sugar based ones don't.
@@prufrock1977there are no counties that have banned hfcs for health reasons. If a country doesn't use it, it's use was probably discouraged by tariffs or import controls to promote domestic sugar production - this was the case in the EU until production restrictions were removed a few years ago.
Why do people on RUclips who drink, like, a combined total of half-a-can of soda pretend like they just ate an entire bag of sugar and chased it with snake venom?
Loving the blind taste testing. I appreciate the idea of myth-busting in the cocktail world. Cheers
This was a fun episode I love your blind taste testing solution.
I used to work in a coffee shop, and I can tell you for an absolute matter of fact that temperature *does* affect flavors. I couldn't tell you why, but the _exact same drink_ would taste different depending on if it was hot, room temperature, or cold. The way that some of the flavors of the HFCS blends with the soda recipes can and absolutely will change if they're actually cold or not. You might have only been able to pick out the HFCS coke this time because it was room temperature and just flat out disappears when cold.
Back when Coke did that limited edition Starlight flavor the temperature had a huge impact on flavor. It changed and you picked up something different as it went from straight out of the fridge to room temperature.
Our taste buds are more sensitive to the molecules that bind to them when they're at a "normal" temperature range. It's why most foods taste a bit less strong when they're very cold or very hot! An easy example is with ice cream. Tastes great when frozen, but most people perceive it to taste overly sweet when it's melted. That's because manufacturers put in a ton of sugar to make sure it tastes appropriately sweet when served freezing cold.
I had a Coke the other day after years of drinking the stuff with sugar in it and it tasted.. not one bit "sweet". It was more sour and acidic with a hint of sweet. Drinkable, but utterly lacking in the crispness of the version with sugar in it.
I've tasted a lot of real sugar and hfcs sodas, and I don't find a flavor difference at all, but a texture difference as you noted in the coke taste test. Sugar has a sharper, bubblier texture to me, while hfcs has a smoother texture. Once you described the textures of the cokes, I knew which one was which immediately, then you didn't describe any of the others similarly so I couldn't pinpoint them.
To me real sugar soda is more refreshing. I can drink just 1 can and be happy.
I'm really weird about soda too. I will only drink real sugar sodas or zero sugar ones. My one exception is I drink regular Coke if I'm getting fast food. I can't stand regular Pepsi, but love real sugar Pepsi.
Fun and enjoyable episode! Would be interested in if you did this but with the regular and "zero sugar" variants of sodas. There would be a difference but curious which you would find more appealing. Love the channel!
4:30 I can watch this kind of nerding-out all day. The GLEE at pulling out the chemistry kit!
There may also be difference between glass and can stored beverages. Cans block more light, glass doesn’t have the plastic can liners.
I've found in testing it myself out of curiosity, that /maybe/ you can tell if you're looking for it and analyzing every minute tasting note, but if you're not completely dialled-in, it's essentially impossible. And it makes sense, really. HFCS is essentially designed to mimic the balance of the component sugars in sucrose.
The flavor is also balanced by a lab. They can adjust the recipe as much as they want to dial in the flavor so there is zero percievable difference.
I have a fructose insensitivity, and after having covid I can pick it out in an aftertaste. I know it sounds weird, but I can. Never used to before. And all sodas share it. It’s like the aspartame taste.
Cool rig, mate. Great idea and execution.
A brilliant setup!
I’d love to see you do a taste test between red vermouth that sits on the counter for 3 months and red vermouth that has been in the fridge for 3 months.
I keep (and have kept) my red vermouth on the counter, but out of direct sunlight, since I started cocktailing about 12 years ago. I had one bottle of Quinquina spoil after about 3 years. (The red precipitated out as flakes, and the remaining liquid was the color of white vermouth.)
My experience is that red vermouth does not benefit from refrigeration if I drink it within a year or two. And no one on the internet believes me.
That’s actually been a thing I’ve wanted to do for a while
@@howtodrink I'd love to see that too. I have some vermouth that I've been meaning to try in some drinks but I'm always afraid to open it because I definitely know I can't go through the whole bottle in 3 months.
Gotta do triangle tests like Ethan Chlebowski does with his in depth taste tests.
Greg, I REALLY appreciate how thorough you were on this one. Going so far as to isolate the HFCS for testing with just the syrup and sugar water was a brilliant move that I have not see anyone go the extra stage for. One thing you did not mention is that the Pepsi Real Sugar is not just flavored with cane sugar, they also use beet sugar. So even people wanting "real sugar" aren't getting what they wanted with that product, and likely all three of them to be honest.
Glad I called the result, though. :D
I wish the US gov't would end the tariffs and subsidies that make HFCS so attractive in the first place, though. Even if they taste the same at the end I think I'd prefer cane sugar over doing all those extra steps to make HFCS.
PS: Now that you have the "HFCS Simple" you should make some cocktails with it vs your regular. I was surprised you didn't, tbh. It would have been a nice capstone if nothing else. :D
Would love to see more taste tests - telling cheap vs. expensive liquors would be fun
As a Dr Pepper addict myself, the main difference that I can tell from regular Dr Pepper vs Real Sugar Dr Pepper is that the Real Sugar version tastes cleaner somehow. I guess maybe "more smooth" is a better term for it, but I definitely taste a difference.
My brother and I drink Dr Pepper real sugar in glass bottles. What a difference between the regular plastic bottle version.
Ive noticed simlular. Maybe real sugar soda has a shorter shelf life and Greg is already accounting for that?
Your correct, corny syrup is for lack of a better word, “gunky”
Here in Argentina they changed coke to hfcs in the pandemic.. I only noticed because it made fernet con Coca More bitter, and the labels started to come with 'new recipe, 80% of the calories' because hfcs is sweeter per gram than sugar so they add less = less calories. Luckily if you buy the glass cokes, with returnable bottles you get the og recipe
I LOVE all the thought and work you put into this. I have wondered for years if HFCS tastes weird to me just because I’m allergic to corn.
Thanks! I assume HFCS doesn’t actually trigger your allergy, right? I don’t think there’s anything meaningfully “corn” in there
@@howtodrink No, it still manages to. It’s not as bad as when I was a kid, but it used to be fairly brutal.
This was a great break down. Keep it going.
The main thing I've noticed is soda with corn syrup has a thicker, more syrupy texture to it than the cane sugar. The flavor is more muted too with the corn syrup.
There's a difference in *feel* too, HFCS sodas has a different feel that builds towards the back of my throat.
I think this is true, but I also think the ability to detect it is probably heavily variable.
To me, real sugar in general kind of has an unpleasant texture in soda. High fructose corn syrup is kind of slimy, whereas real sugar is kind of gritty on the teeth.
I've done science experiments where I asked people to taste the same juice blend tinted with different food colorings (red, purple, and a mossy muddy green that I'd deliberately formulated to be offputting). Almost everyone thought that they were different flavors (and quite a few people _liked_ the slime-green one).
Love to see some blind tests of liquors and mixers
HFCS has a certain aftertaste to it, like aspartame does. I only began noticing it after I had Covid, but it’s there in all sodas.
For me, it's a matter of texture/feel after sipping on anything made with HFCS, sugar, or (especially) sucralose. Especially salient when compared head-to-head and not concentrating on the "sweetness", necessarily, but the mouthfeel.
HFCS - ends up heavy/weighty in comparison to other sweeteners, though dissipates readily
Sugar - lighter/airy after the flavor and liquid are gone, it doesn't linger
Sucralose - mid-weighted coating on the mouth/tongue (akin to slimy textures)
Blue agave nectar and honey, I find similar, where they have a slightly heavier feel than sugar, but dissipate almost as quickly.
Agreed on the textures! I'd guess some people are just more sensitive to the differences for whatever reason- some kind of corn detecting gene lmao
You nailed it. The feels are different
Same! I hate the way my teeth feel after drinks with HFCS. I've gotten juice blends to mix with fizzy water and wondered why I didn't like how they felt and the reason was always HFCS. I actually like soda I just hate the mouth feel.
I do enjoy the apparatus you made for this purpose. I look forward to seeing it again.
I would have maybe done one more test, it can't possibly be done blind since one is liquid and the other solid, but a small sample of each type of sugar, pure just to see if you can detect a taste difference like that would have been interesting. I don't know about everyone else but I trust that you want to know as much as we do what the truth is and would therefor be as unbiased as you are able.
Awsome video. Thank you for clearing that up.
Your coca-cola comparison was pretty spot on.
To me there is a very clear difference between hfcs and regular sugar. It is less to do with sweetness and much more to do with mouthfeel. Sodas with regular sugar have a thinner feeling with stronger carbonation that tends to feel like smaller bubbles. I think it does as a lighter brighter feeling to sodas. Temperature may be a favor here. Regular sugar also has a stronger feeling almost like it sticks to your teeth
Living in a country that doesn't use HFCS, when I try imported American drinks with HFCS I always get that mouthfeel difference, and it may well be temperature dependant. Sugar is crisp, thin and light compared to HFCS. I would say the sweetness is not quite the same taste, but I don't have a large enough sample size to be confident of that aspect.
What happened to Meredith
She and her wife had their baby. Maternity leave.
@@themurph930 awe that's awesome! So excited for them.
Super interesting!! Love this idea
Also, love seeing the remarkable! I love mine and its so rare to see someone using one.
Haven't even watched the full video yet, but as someone with a corn syrup allergy, yes you absolutely can. I have to drink diet soda or Mexican/ cane sugar sodas, and if I am unfortunately served regular soda I can taste it immediately. Then I have to spit it out and pop a benadryl while keeping my epi pen nearby for a few hours
Pretty sure you're tasting a difference because your body thinks it's poison. The difference isn't in your tastebuds there.
let me tell you as an Australian who has travelled to America. on my soul it is SUCH a significant difference lmao.
That's a really neat way of doing blind (actually double blind, even) testing.
I support this kinda stuff completely. It's stuff I would do if I had the time and drive. Well done Greg.🤔👏👏
something that i've always noticed when a product doesn't have HFCS is that i don't have a lingering gross flavor in my mouth. I never really pay much attention to it when im eating but it's immediately apparent to me if say a barbecue sauce uses sugar instead bc of the lack of lingering aftertaste
That lingering gross flavor is the sodium benzoate and other preservatives that they must put in the product to make it long-term stable and not grow mold. The stuff with sugar in it rarely has it, so it comes off more like, say, what you would get with homemade sweet tea or lemonade - bright and sweet throughout with no aftertaste aside from what you are sweetening.
@@plektosgaming oh interesting. So you're saying then that products with HFCS also have those other agents in them and those are might what be causing the flavor?
Consider doing a triangle test next time. 2 of each drink, only try 3 and see if you can tell which one is not like the other two.
Awesome video! Thank you Greg 💜💜
Hey Greg! Love the content. Had an idea for an episode in this vein that I thought I would share. Why don't you try to recreate as close to the sodas as possible but incorporate some spirits if you want? Sort of like your McCocktail video, but hopefully more palatable 🤣
Where's Meredith?
She commented above that she's on maternity leave, still working on the show.
When I read the thumbnail, my brain read Hydrofluorocarbons, I had to read the title before I realized.😂
Greg's out here confusing the science side of RUclips.
Really appreciated the experimental rigor in this episode! Chemically, sucrose is 50% glucose and 50% fructose. So the high fructose corn syrup should taste almost identical to ordinary sugar, because it is very similar chemically. I think Greg is spot on when he points out to variances in the recipes between the different drinks apart from the sugar content. That may be the real reason for any difference in flavour.
I like the testy/science-y stuff. I mean, mixology is the perfect combination of art and science, so it kinda makes sense.
I’m super confused, could someone help pls. Greg mentions the HFCS is made up of fructose and glucose, them mentions that simple syrup is sucrose. Sucrose is a disaccharide made up of glucose and fructose, in equal parts. So wouldn’t you expect no difference? Anyone have thoughts
he means that the fructose and glucose in HFCS are separate, not bonded in a disaccharide like granulated (sucrose) sugar
Sucrose is a disaccharide made up of fructose molecules and glucose molecules combined into one molecule, but just because it's made up of both of those doesn't mean that it's the same as if you mixed glucose and fructose. The body breaks down the sucrose into glucose and fructose during digestion, but before that point the molecule is technically different and your taste buds will react differently to it.
Table salt is metal halide made of sodium and chlorine ions. Go ingest some chlorine gas and sodium metal then try and explain how there’s no difference compared to eating salt.
@@jacobgrodman thank you, i knew there was a difference but couldn’t put my finger on it. Much appreciated!
Hey Greg, love the episode. If you want to do a fair comparison on Coke, don't compare Mexican vs. US (and can vs. glass bottle)....
Get 2-liter bottles of Regular Coke and "Passover Coke" (which is obviously seasonal. The passover coke has a bright yellow cap, and to be kosher they don't use HFCS.
I love the Remarkable product placement ;) Very in the spirit of the episode I think.
I wish, they won’t take my calls
Fun fact; refractometers are also used in autoshops to test the glycol content of antifreeze (or used to be. Most shops dont use them anymore to my knowledge)
I’ve never been on the “despise HFCS” train; while it IS added to too many foods, I started hating it because of some propaganda commercials the HFCS companies put out a few years ago. I remember seeing one and said, “Are they trying to get me to smoke?!”
I think you underplay the added to too many foods. My friend recently came back from the US and couldn't even eat your bread because it's as sweet as cake compared to Aus.
Good episode, thanks!
Hi Greg. Can I recommend that in future blind tastings you make three drinks. Two identical and one different. Then when you taste a drink, you don’t know if should taste different or not.
With just two drinks you’re straining to find a difference you know is there.
Great episode, love the channel!
Interesting. Sugar tastes brighter to me, but for me it's more how the flavors linger after you drink the soda. The HFCS soda flavor hangs around in my mouth and sodas made with sugar don't have a lingering aftertaste at least to me.
Alot of that is probably in your head. Numerous groups have tested this flavor difference and very few people have been able to consistently tell the difference. I did one once for a biology class and i think one person was able to tell the difference out of the class of like...20 something? i dont remember the exact numbers but it was also a pretty limited sample. So guess was possible.
@@BOYVIRGO666 I don't know, I never knew that yanks used this corn syrup in their drinks when I first visited the US, and thought the sodas tasted different somehow. Far more thicker and sweeter than what I was use to, back in the UK.
@@insertname3977 That also comes down to a bunch of other factors. some ingredients arent allowed in some markets. Also as Greg pointed out the markets also have slightly difference recipes. Iv noticed this in the asian market for coke which tends to be less bubbly.
We getting all the diabetus with this one
Always always repeat your test a few times! Without that this can still just be imagined.
I would have never thought to use a refractometer for drinks. That's super cool.
Two things: 1) Palate Cleanser. May I recommend doing this test and eating a saltine between tests? I think your tongue is getting confused the longer you do it.
2) Try mixing drinks with the real sugar soda vs the corn syrup one, Or with the corn syrup sweetener vs the simple syrup in your classic mixed drinks.