RyanTimes's Profile

Steve
I know of the throwback versions, i tried a throwback mountain dew, didn't like it as much, it had that same sharpness that sugar drinks have for me, and as there is no MTN DEW (haha) in England i missed the smoothness of the HFCS version. After that i had a throwback Pepsi, but as i am a Coke drinker i couldn't reliably say the difference between that and a regular pepsi.
When i first heard about it i thought it was just a demand test, seeing if people were willing to foot the bill for sugar instead of HFCS. But then after i tried it i actually thought it was some kind of trick, in that they release (seemingly) inferior sugar versions to make people think (oh, HFCS is actually better.
I'm actually quite interested to experiment with this now, trying a UK sugar pepsi, US sugar pepsi and a HFCS pepsi and comparing them, seeing if the US sugar tastes worse than the UK sugar.

Also, something of note, we in the UK are still cursed with aspartame! It's in everything "diet" and a few regular drinks, can anyone link to the studies that got aspartame essentially removed from the US market?

Steve,
While 'they specifically measured out not only the amount of food given per day to the rats but also the amount of water. That's simple due diligence that should be expected from a scientific study.' is completely true, there is no information on the amount consumed by the rats, while they may have been given x amount each day, it would not be unheard of for one group to drink y (y<x) amount of one instead, and the full x amount for the other.

The stew example is purely illustrative, the experiment clearly states the food given to the two experiments was the same, it was just to relate to commenters the rats dependence on experiment variables for survival. I realise now a much better example would have been tube fed coffee with caffeine content as the variable. ;)

tsbbq,
1. I too would like to hear the reasoning for this, until then i will take the conclusion as they have conducted the experiment, heavily biased against HFCS.

2. I was referring to political relations between the two countries, and its corresponding impact on US sugar prices as opposed to, for instance British sugar prices are at 75p/kg

Hold on, I have my doubts here. 'The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas.'

I know if i eat something that's kind of sweet i end up eating more to try and get the same level of sweetness fulfilment as something that's really sweet. For instance: I can only ever eat one slice of cake, but if i ate something less sweet (like hersheys chocolate) i could eat much more because i'm not hitting that 'sweet cap' as quickly. I think the rats gained weight because they were ingesting the stuff twice as much trying to reach the same level of satisfaction.

As a disclaimer, i'm British, though a regular visitor to the states, so i HAVE tried both sugar and high-fructose corn syrup versions of the same products. And i think while the reasons for the US adopting HFCS are stupid (no trade with South America) i don't think HFCS deserves the bad rep. it gets.