Chemistry Studies in Siena 2012: A Truly FANTA-stic Drink

After being in Italy for over 3 weeks, you really start to feel homesick. Good news is, there's always Coca-Cola products within walking distance to make you feel like you're back in Atlanta. As a devoted customer to the number one soft drink brand in the world, I couldn't help but notice the taste differences in the Coke, Sprite, and Fanta Orange bottles sold in Italy compared to the United States.

The differences in taste were due to a key difference in ingredients used to produce coke. While Coca-Cola products in Italy as well as Mexico were made using real sugars, in the United States, Coca-Cola products used high fructose corn syrups (HFCS) to sweeten their soft drinks instead. The usage of HFCS to replace real sugar was a result of the low costs of HFCS due to government subsidies on corn. While this is great for the company, the American population today may be paying the ultimate price.

HFCS is produced by milling corn to make corn starch. Corn starch is then produced to yield corn syrup that is comprised almost entirely of glucose. To produce fructose from glucose, an aldehyde in glucose is isomerized into fructose by breaking a C-H bond next to a carbonyl atom. The production of fructose from glucose yields 42% fructose (HFCS 42). HFCS 42 can further be purified into HFCS 90, but our soft drinks are composed of primarily HFCS 42.

Fructose is shown to have over 2x the relative sweetness of glucose, making it a valuable substitute for commercial purposes. Not only are HFCS prevalent in Coke, it is also very common in other processed foods such as breads, cereals, lunch meats, yogurts, and soups. Major concerns have been raised about HFCS causing obesity, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes, but the general consensus is that HFCS are no more detrimental to health than other types of sugars. However, HFCS are known to generate lower rates of satiety relative to other sugars. This "lack of satisfaction and fullness" can ultimately lead to a larger number of calorie consumption in the public.

We've all known that soft drinks are bad for you, but the American population continues to guzzle them down like water (I used to be one of those soda fanatics). For Coke lovers, consider drinking orange Fanta. But not just any type of orange Fanta, Italian orange Fanta. A 20 oz bottle of orange Fanta produced in the United States contains 74g of sugar compared to a 20 oz bottle in Italy, which only has 58g of sugar. Not only that, but the Italian Orange Fanta contains 12% real juice as well and has no caffeine. So if you're craving for soda, why not try a FANTA-stic drink next time?