Coke's the Real Thing? Maybe but Which One?

By Fred Bruning

July 27, 2025

It’s not the most important thing in the world – ha! no kidding? – but Coca-Cola is fiddling with the formula again.

You remember last time.

It was 1985 and, so far as anyone has ever figured out, Coke’s marketing geniuses in Atlanta woke up one morning and said to themselves, gee, things are going really good, let’s do something crazy.

Soon, we had New Coke, which caused Americans – often slow on matters of national consequence – to rally as though Redcoats again were wading ashore in Boston.

The New Coke was just off, too sweet, too odd, too unlike the original – too New.

“On the street it was considered a national disaster,” said the Encyclopedia Britannica which devoted considerable space to the issue. The drink was booed at public events, ridiculed in the press and, in one case, poured down sewers.

Within three months, the original Coke – now labeled Coca-Cola Classic – was back in business. The inscrutable new drink persisted for several years, rebranded as Coke II and then, enjoying only what Britannica noted was a “miniscule” market share, disappeared.

This latest matter is more complicated.

Increasingly available is bottled Coke made in Mexico – Mexi-Coke, as it is known. Instead of corn syrup, the Mexicans use cane sugar as sweetener. Some people like Mexi-Coke better than Ameri-Coke, no big deal.

Because absolutely nothing escapes politics these days, the story does not end there.

Our President endorsed cane sugar – reasons appear tied to public health, tariffs, processed foods, American agriculture, the theories of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and who knows what else occupying the chief executive’s mind – and, quickly enough, corporate Coke said, terrific idea, sir, we will now offer a U.S.A. version of Coke with cane sugar.

"As part of its ongoing innovation agenda, this fall in the United States, the company plans to launch an offering made with U.S. cane sugar to expand its Trademark Coca-Cola product range," said a news release.

Worth noting perhaps is that President Trump will not benefit from the emphasis on cane sugar. The nation’s most famous teetotaler and part-time wellbeing advisor drinks only Diet Coke.

Longtime and unapologetic consumer of regular Coca-Cola, I’m agnostic on the question.

At one of my favorite Brooklyn pizza places, The Astarita, across from Green-Wood Cemetery, they serve Mexi-Coke, and while I sit there nibbling another margherita slice, it is not the comparative merits of cane sugar and corn syrup that occur to me.

Beyond the sidewalk, Green-Wood’s population rests undisturbed in a huge and shady province, hilly and tree-lined, its lush silence unbroken by the tourists and urban hikers who, respectfully, come to see the remarkable crypts and monuments and search for graves of famous people – Boss Tweed, Horace Greeley, Charlie Ebbets, DeWitt Clinton, Louis Comfort Tiffany, Jean-Michael Basquiat, Leonard Bernstein, among them.

My parents, Fred and Winnie, share space with the well-known, beneath a family marker on Jasmine Avenue. We go there sometimes to see if the grass has been cut and to maybe pull a couple weeds. I touch the top of the gravestone, coarse and cool, and, without words, tell Fred and Winnie I love them, that, holy cow, imagine, I’m getting up there myself, but hanging in, dear folks, hanging in.

Another sip of Mexi-Coke, another bite of margherita, a conversation with the owner, Tina, a thanks to the pizzaiolo commanding The Astarita’s brick oven, and I’m off, tastes lingering, memories, too.

How fortunate we are if only the source of a soft drink sweetener can occupy our thoughts for very long. Separating the significant from the absurd has become a necessary daily exercise – you know, what’s wacko and what’s not?

Nothing profound in any of this as, no doubt, you have concluded.

Just a summer diversion to take note of a late-breaking matter of little importance – corn syrup vs. cane sugar, only in America, right? – and to wish everyone well no matter their preference, which, it seems to me, is something we need to practice more, and should be at the top of our ongoing innovation agenda.

Previous Invisible Ink posts at: https://fredbruning.substack.com/archive