- Mexican Coke is just so much better.
(funky investigative music)
Real sugar.
Everything's in Spanish.
This beautiful retro bottle.
(slides click)
It's just better.
Right?
It's just better.
Actually, the reality is no.
Something's going on with Mexican Coke
and I need to tell you about it.
(cool music)
By the way, this video is sponsored by Squarespace,
which I will tell you about at the end of the video.
- [Retro Announcer 1] Ice cold Coca-Cola.
- [Retro Announcer 2] A quality product
made with the best of materials.
♪ Have a Coke and a smile ♪
- So we're here in our little cabin,
which is actually an 1800s church,
see the picture of Jesus right there,
that we've turned into an Airbnb that you can rent out
if you want.
But I'm here to talk about Coke.
So let me sit here on this old church Pew and tell you
what I've learned about this Mexican Coke
over the past few days of sitting here in isolation.
Is this really Mexican Coke?
I mean, it says hecho en Mexico on it,
so it's gotta be Mexican Coke, right?
- [Retro Announcer 1] Nothing else
gives you the bracing sparkle
and the bright little lip
that's so delightfully yours than ice cold Coca-Cola.
- First off, let's talk about what Coca-Cola even is
and why there's a difference between US Coke
and Mexican Coke.
I mean, Coca-Cola is like this giant international company
that is known for having a secret recipe
that they export to every corner of the globe.
So why is there a difference between Coca-Colas?
♪ I'd like to buy the world a Coke ♪
♪ And keep it company ♪
- I mean, let's go straight to the source of all knowledge:
Wikipedia, right?
The drink's name refers to its original ingredients,
coca leaves and kola nuts, a source of caffeine.
Wait, what?
Coca leaves?
I know coca leaves,
but only because I rode with a bunch of antinarcotic police
in a helicopter over coca fields in Columbia,
busting people for cocaine production
for an episode of Vox Borders.
These are the people who are growing coca leaves.
Yes, indeed.
The original Coca-Cola recipe included coca leaves,
which is a derivative that is used to make cocaine,
but don't worry.
Your bottle of Coke doesn't include any coca leaves today,
or maybe it does, or no one really knows
because no one actually knows the recipe.
This is not a conspiracy video about cocaine
being in your Coke.
I'm interested in another ingredient
that is inside of this bottle.
And it's the sweetener.
(sniffing noise)
- It's made out of sugar.
- Sugar.
- Sugar cane.
- Sugar!
- It's made with better ingredients.
- Originally, all Coca-Cola was sweetened
with the same thing, straight up sugar.
Or what it's chemically known as, sucrose.
But then, a few things happened in the United States
that changed that.
First, the US government got really aggressive
about giving money to US farmers to keep them profitable.
So they started pouring a lot of money into corn,
subsidizing corn farmers in the United States.
You can see this very clearly in our country.
There are entire states that are basically
one giant corn field.
So if you're a corn farmer in the 1980s,
you have every incentive in the world
to just produce loads of corn,
as much as your soil can possibly eke out.
Unsurprisingly, what this means is that
you have a major surplus of corn.
Loads of corn everywhere, way too much corn
just spilling out of every corner of the United States.
At the same time, the US is putting up trade barriers,
basically tariffs, for sugar coming in from other countries.
So sugar became expensive.
Corn became incredibly cheap.
And so businesses like Coca-Cola did what businesses do
and they rejiggered everything
to find the cheapest possible option.
And this is when they turned to a newly invented sweetener
that came from corn and tasted sweet like sugar,
but was chemically very different.
Sugar is sucrose.
That's its kind of chemical name.
This new corn sweetener was glucose and fructose,
but it was still very sweet, but it came from cheap corn.
And they started to use that to sweeten their Coca-Cola
in the United States.
Enter high-fructose corn syrup.
- [Retro Announcer 3] Did you know that corn,
one of America's favorite foods,
is used to make America's favorite syrup?
A wholesome kind of sweetness that comes from corn.
- Look what happened to high-fructose corn syrup production
in the United States versus sugar in the 80s and 90s.
High fructose corn syrup became the obvious choice
because it was way cheaper and Coca-Cola started using it
to sweeten their drinks.
So this is how you get two different Coca-Colas.
The United States producing Coke
that is made with high-fructose corn syrup
and the rest of the world, including Mexico,
without any of these trade restrictions and corn subsidies,
continuing to use cane sugar to sweeten their Coca-Cola.
And then the taste wars begin.
(funky upbeat music)
- Ooh.
- It's actually a lot better.
- [Man Offscreen] It's the sugar.
Got a natural.
- Not all syrup-y.
- Soon, Mexican Coke became a delicacy in the United States.
It was only sent to places that had big Mexican populations
or other immigrant populations
that were used to this cane sugar Coke.
And so it became rare and hard to find and obscure.
Not surprisingly, hipsters like me got really into it.
It was authentic, and it was the original recipe,
and it was hard to find,
and it was in this retro glass bottle.
It felt like some commodity was being like,
sent from the other side of the border
in this kind of renegade way
and we were getting in on it.
It tastes so much better with that cane sugar.
- [Male Voice] Man, that stuff is so good.
- It won't feel like corn syrup all over in my guts.
- Just have a much smoother, more delicious taste.
- So much better.
So much better.
But wait, this is where it starts to get really weird.
In 2010, a group of legit scientists get together
to do a legitimate experiment
for a legitimate science journal.
And they want to test soft drinks, including Coca-Cola.
They want to know what sorts of sweetener
are being used for each and how much of that sweetener
is in each of them.
So they gather a bunch of soft drinks,
including a Mexican Coca-Cola and an American Coca-Cola.
And they do all of their testing.
And what they find is that the Mexican Coca-Cola
actually has no sucrose in it, meaning sugar,
all they find in this is glucose and fructose.
The elements that are used
to build high fructose corn syrup.
What?
In the Mexican Coke that came from a Latino market
in east LA, they found no sugar.
They only found the elements for high fructose corn syrup.
What is happening?
This is supposed to be sugar!
It says on the ingredients it's sugar,
but it tastes so much better.
It's different.
It tastes so much better, right?
(suspenseful music)
Better, right?
(sighs) It gets weirder.
In 2013, Mexican lawmakers became very concerned
with the obesity rate in Mexico,
which is considered by public health officials
as quote, "the fattest country in the world."
Not my words, theirs.
(dramatic music)
Mexico has a big obesity problem.
And one of the links to that
is the massive amount of sugar that is consumed.
Mexican legislators slapped on a tax for soda.
All soda was going to be subject to a tax,
which made it more expensive to produce,
which sent Coca-Cola looking for cheaper options
to bottle their Coke and cheaper options
equal high fructose corn syrup.
As of 2013.
Okay, we're talking like seven years ago,
more and more bottlers of Coca Cola in Mexico,
serving Mexican markets, are using high fructose corn syrup
to sweeten their Coca-Cola and selling it in Mexico.
So now even legitimate Mexican Coke
is not even Mexican Coke anymore.
It's identical to the high fructose corn syrup stuff
you buy here.
One of the main bottlers came out and said, don't worry.
We're going to continue to send cane sugar Coke
to the United States because we know
that people really like it in the United States
and we'll to send it because it's good business for us
to keep making it with cane sugar.
But I don't even believe that guy because of that study.
Remember the study that said no sucrose,
only glucose and fructose.
Ie. high fructose corn syrup.
I don't believe you, Mexican bottler.
I don't believe that you're sending us
cane sugar Coca-Cola anymore.
Not surprisingly, Coca-Cola has caught onto this idea
that people like me love Mexican Coke
and they've totally leaned into it.
They've created this gimmicky branding
that's like, hecho en Mexico.
Here it is.
Here's the offending product.
Bought it at target.
It's just sitting here, being so tokenizing
of Mexican aesthetic and culture.
Okay, back to it.
Authentic original flavors.
And they've really leaned into it
because they know that there's a cult following
of people like me, who will pay more money.
Okay, so I've been social distancing out here
in this cabin in the woods for like two weeks.
I have been reading way too much
about the Coca-Cola bottling industry.
And it has completely shattered my identity
as a Mexican Coke drinker.
One because there's probably not even sugar in this,
and two because Mexicans
don't even drink Mexican Coke anymore.
They drink high fructose corn syrup.
Cool.
I guess there is still one reason
why I would drink Mexican Coke,
Because it still comes in this cool retro glass bottle
that makes me feel really cool about myself.
And that is why I will continue to drink it.
Thank you.
- Cheers to y'all.
- And now let me sit by my wood burning stove
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Thank you Squarespace for sponsoring this video
and thank you all for watching about Mexican Coke
or should we just say Coca-Cola
'cause it's not Mexican Coke.
Mexican Coke is a lie.