Trump and Coca Cola
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. President Trump says Coca-Cola has agreed to change its recipe, and the corn industry is giving him an earful.
On social media, Trump wrote that Coca-Cola executives have agreed to switch from high fructose corn syrup in Coke to cane sugar.
For the Corn Refiners Association’s President and CEO John Bode (BOW-dee), that’s not ‘the Real Thing’ …
BODE … “Replacing HFCS with cane sugar would be a devastating blow to thousands of manufacturing jobs in American agriculture, and it would depress farm prices, and it would add to our trade deficit because every bit of HFCS that is replaced with cane sugar would be imported cane sugar.”
As for the economic impact on the US corn industry, Bode cited a study by North Dakota State University …
BODE … “The immediate impact on corn prices, nationally, would be 15-to-34 cents per bushel, a devastating blow to American agriculture. And, once again, this tweet was talking about cane sugar, so there’s not any consolation for the beet growers.”
A “MAHA Commission” report in May argued that high-fructose corn syrup is a factor in obesity and related diseases. But a Washington Post story says scientists say there’s little nutritional difference between the two.
