Coca-Cola announced plans on Tuesday to distribute in the United States a version of its signature soft drink with cane sugar, a move that comes after Diet Coke-loving President Donald Trump took credit last week for pressuring the company to switch.
Trump’s administration would have you believe this change is some sort of pro-health coup. When, for example, fast-food company Steak n’ Shake announced plans to distribute Coke with cane sugar last weekend, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed, “MAHA is winning,” referring to the so-called Make America Healthy Again movement.
As The Washington Post points out, Kennedy told a radio show in 2023, “High-fructose corn syrup. That is poison. … Clearly it is linked to the obesity epidemic. It’s linked to the diabetes epidemic.” He went on to tout so-called Mexican Coke “because they don’t have it in it.”
Trump himself claimed Coke with cane sugar is “just better” when he made his announcement last week. In terms of taste, perhaps.
For its part, Coca-Cola’s announcement — that it will offer Coke with cane sugar in addition to Coke with corn syrup — wasn’t really pitched by the company itself as a decision motivated by health reasons. Which was smart, because as to whether cane sugar–sweetened Coca-Cola is markedly healthier than regular Coke, sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, an NBC News report answered in the negative:
When it comes to potential health impacts, the answer is no, said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, a cardiologist and director of the Food is Medicine Institute at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. ‘Both high-fructose corn syrup and cane sugar are about 50% fructose, 50% glucose, and have identical metabolic effects,’ he said. That is, both can equally raise the risk for obesity, diabetes, and high triglycerides and blood pressure. Both provide the same number of calories, but the body processes them differently.
Another expert told NBC News that the change could produce some benefits on a very broad basis but also noted that neither cane sugar nor corn syrup is especially healthy:
Dr. Melanie Jay, a professor of medicine and population health at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and director of the NYU Langone Comprehensive Program on Obesity Research, said it’s possible that switching from corn syrup to cane sugar may be beneficial on a population level. ‘A 5% difference might mean that millions of people are getting less fructose,’ she said. ‘But it’s not like table sugar is a health food. Added sugar in whatever form should be limited.’
It’s a point MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen also made after Kennedy’s Steak n’ Shake endorsement.
“I was a personal trainer for almost a decade. Honest to God, the number one thing I would tell my weight loss clients was to eliminate soda and fast food from their diets,” Cohen said “Here, the ‘MAHA’ Secretary of HHS is cheering on soda… at a fast food restaurant. Snake oil salesman.”
In contrast to the other decisions Trump’s administration has made that stand to harm public health — like undermining efforts to stop the spread of “forever chemicals” linked to cancer and heart disease, overseeing steep cuts to federal food safety programs and rolling back federal air pollution standards that prevent the spread of mercury and arsenic — the Trump administration’s spin on the Coca-Cola news seems more like public health theater than a truly beneficial change.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
