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Mexican coke at the Costco, at least in San Francisco. This superior product is made with cane sugar, not that junky syrup. The pointer is from Jason Kottke. Only 75 cents per bottle. Here is another post on Mexican coke.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 4, 2007 at 05:45 PM in Food and Drink | Permalink
Comments
I just fell out of my chair. I would buy a Costco membership just for this in a heartbeat. The last time I got some off the internet I paid around $2.60 a bottle...
Posted by: Noah Yetter at May 4, 2007 6:07:25 PM
Usually I stock up during Passover, they sell Kosher for Passover Coke (no HFCS) at the same price as the regular stuff then.
Posted by: Paul N at May 4, 2007 6:15:37 PM
I prefer Colombian or Bolivian coke, personally.
Posted by: Dave at May 4, 2007 7:00:29 PM
Can we be certain that Mexican Coke is up to American standards of purity and safety? I know Indian Coke isn't, or at least wasn't a few years ago... however it was delicious.
Posted by: minderbender at May 4, 2007 8:35:49 PM
Yeah, what Paul N said. Always stock up on kosher for Passover Coke. It has real sugar.
Posted by: Darren at May 4, 2007 9:14:54 PM
A friend of mine here in Tucson used to make a monthly sojourn to Nogales to get the "real stuff." Must have made for a fun border crossing. "Anything in the car, Sir?" "Just a trunkful of Coke officer."
Posted by: Nathan Benedict at May 4, 2007 9:33:28 PM
Kinda makes you wonder why Coke wont just sell the product with real sugar in the states? If this many people are going to such great lengths to get Coke with real sugar then what is stopping Coca Cola from moving away from high fructose corn syrup? Why drink something that tastes worse and is worse for you?
BTW, when I go to Italy or France, are those coke products made with real sugar or are they just like the U.S version?
Posted by: John Pertz at May 4, 2007 11:31:54 PM
John Pertz: America drinks a silly-huge amount of Coca-Cola every year. If the soda manufacturers switched back to cane sugar, they price of their product would go way up. The rest of the world doesn't drink nearly as much ($0.75 (assuming Costco's markup is small) goes a lot further south of the border).
Posted by: billb at May 5, 2007 12:06:58 AM
Canadian pops used to be all sugar as well but it is slowly shifting over. According to the label on our Coke it could be either or both. But I get tons of requests south of the border from friends for our Coke, juice pigs and cherry sours. Canadian SCA folks often bring Coke across the border to events for the Americans.
Isn't RC Cola in Atlanta still cane sugar?
Posted by: T.Wd at May 5, 2007 12:36:44 AM
I'm from Mexico, and always thought mexican coke (a-cola) tasted better because it came in glass bottles. Oh well, perhaps it is the sugar. In any case, it can also be found in Chicago in Pete's Fresh Market, a supermarket chain (four locations, methinks) with a killer produce section, for the same 75c a bottle. If you go please try the delicious Sidral Mundet, a mexican apple soda, and the best drink in the whole wide world.
Posted by: Sebastian Villarreal at May 5, 2007 3:41:08 AM
Perhaps with ethanol producers driving up the price of corn, American soft drink producers will soon find it more economical to use real sugar than corn syrup.
Posted by: John S. at May 5, 2007 3:46:21 AM
Sebastian is so so right about Sidral. lo mejor refresco del mundo. I got hooked on it when I lived in Mexico. Lucky for me our awesome local mexican restaurant has it. I'll have to ask about the coke situation there, I didn't know anything about that til today, so I'm happy Tyler has dropped that trade junk and returned to posting real serious information!!
Posted by: kevin at May 5, 2007 10:01:07 AM
You can order Dr. Pepper w/sugar from the original bottling plant near Waco.
It's smoother, doesn't have the bite.
As to sugar, until we can get rid of the domestic subsidies, forget it.
Posted by: Sandy P at May 5, 2007 10:39:04 AM
It's both the glass bottles and the sugar that make it taste better. The domestic 8oz glass bottles have the best taste of the corn syrup versions, with aluminum cans following second, in my opinion.
The Coca-Cola Company stubbornly maintains that there is no difference in taste between sugar and corn syrup, which shows a disturbing lack of familiarity with their own product.
Posted by: Jonas Cord at May 5, 2007 2:50:16 PM
Check this out:
http://www.notcot.com/archives/2007/05/coca_de_mayo.php
Posted by: Chris Meisenzahl at May 6, 2007 7:58:30 AM
Why do people assume Mexican Coke is made with 100% sugar?
The February 2007 USDA Sugar and Sweeteners Outlook states that Mexican sugar prices are now well above US sugar prices -- for refined, 35 cents/lb in Mexico and 26 cents/lb in the US; for raw, 31 cents/lb in Mexico vs 20 cents/lb in US. As a result, Mexican soft drink producers have been switching massively to HFCS.
Here's the reference: http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/SSS/SSS-02-06-2007.pdf
And have people ever looked at the label on these Mexican Cokes? it says "azucares" which includes both sugar and HFCS. The bottler can switch to HFCS and never change labels.
The commenters on this item on Serious Eats point out that Coke from different places tastes different because it has more or less CO2, glass bottles vs cans, different solids balance, different water. This is true even within Europe, where all Cokes use sugar.
So consumers at Costco are paying premium prices for a product that may well have the same HFCS in it as Coke bottled in California.
Posted by: Shawna at May 6, 2007 11:26:59 AM
I guess this just shows the beloved goal of product homogeneity industry loves so much is not possible unless you have a single point of origin for production which isn't going to happen in the global market and desperate scrambles for that next decimal place of profit. But yeash the home market version of the product being inferior to everyone else's sucks.
Posted by: T.W at May 6, 2007 4:43:14 PM
Chinese coke is better too, and I bet they can find a way to ship it here for less than the Mexicans.
Posted by: Matt at May 7, 2007 8:57:08 AM
I bought cane sugar Dr Pepper at my local Wal-Mart a couple of days ago. Not much more expensive than the normal kind - $6.79 for 12 16 oz cans vs. about that same price for 24 12 oz cans with corn syrup. It isn't Dublin DP, either - it is labeled with the standard-issue "Coca-Cola Bottling Company" bottler that most Texas-based DP has. It wouldn't be too hard for Coke to do the same, given that at least one of their own bottlers can do it for DP.
Posted by: rvman at May 7, 2007 11:08:11 AM
I've been buying this at Wal-Mart (in Texas) for years.
Costco must be finally catching up.
Posted by: beloml at May 7, 2007 12:52:39 PM
Shawna, I know it's sugar because I can taste it! In fact I don't even need to drink a drop, I can smell the difference between corn syrup and sugar colas.
Posted by: Noah Yetter at May 7, 2007 4:28:48 PM
I don't know or care what type of sweetener is used in Mexican Coke. Calling it a "superior product" is dubious because, in my opinion, it tastes bad (worse than Pepsi, and I am not a Pepsi fan). For a product with zero nutritional value, I would think that taste is the primary factor in determining which product is "superior" or "inferior."
Posted by: Doug at May 7, 2007 4:47:27 PM
Mexico coke is now in the Wallmart in Oxnard California. I talked to a representative at Coke and they told me coke is doing test marketing to see how well it sells. It seems the price of corn syrup is going up with ethanol and such. Plus genetically modified HFCS is getting a bad rap as well as the news that corn syrup is more fattening than sugar (even when the "sugars" in the carbohydrates are the same.
Sugar coke tastes so much better I can't believe it. I was buying it in sacramento (when I drove thru as I don't live there) up until 2005 when the licence came up and coke FORCED them to switch over. They told me the cost of the sugar vs the corn syrup wasn't ever a factor and they never raised the price.
I recently started Justsugar.com. I have not done much with it yet as I don't have the time, but I want to point out to people all the products that have corn syrup in them. From bread to tomato soup. Even ice cream tastes better with sugar.
It's funny. America created an icon with coke, but we have the worst tasting coke in the world. Kind of like Hersheys chococlate, just buy and australian cadbury and you never want to go back.
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