Trump toasts victory as Coca-Cola confirms cane sugar version
Trump had announced, in an unexpected intervention last week, that Coca-Cola would switch from high-fructose corn syrup to cane sugar. 'It's just better!' he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Initially the Atlanta-based drinks company appeared reluctant to confirm his announcement. However, unveiling its quarterly results on Tuesday it promised to start selling Coke made with American cane sugar in the autumn.
The company said the sugar version would complement Coca-Cola's 'strong core portfolio' and was part of its 'ongoing innovation agenda'.
Cane sugar is used in countries outside the US, including Mexico, but the company moved to cheaper corn syrup in the US in the 1980s. Mexican Coke has a cult status in the US, where it is sold in glass bottles and regarded by connoisseurs — including Rishi Sunak, the British former prime minister — as superior in taste to the corn syrup version.
American farmers across several states in the Midwest cultivate about $74 billion of corn a year, compared with about $1.35 billion a year of cane sugar, grown mostly in Florida, Louisiana and Texas.
Trump himself drinks Diet Coke, which uses the sweetener aspartame, and upon returning to the White House this year he reinstalled a button in the Oval Office to summon cans of his favourite drink. His interest in the full-fat version appears to derive from his friendship with José Fanjul, a Cuban-born cane sugar magnate and Republican donor.
Trump held a meeting earlier this year with James Quincey, the chief executive of Coca-Cola. According to 2024, a new book on Trump's re-election by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, during the meeting Trump called up Fanjul and put him on speakerphone, allowing the billionaire to interrogate Quincey over the company's use of corn syrup rather than cane sugar.
Trump with James Quincey, who offered him a commemorative bottle for his re-election
Doctors say cane sugar and corn syrup are equally damaging to people's health. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, who has attempted to reduce the number of additives and preservatives in American food, has previously described sugar as a 'poison'.
But after Trump's intervention, Kennedy said a decision by Steak 'n Shake, a fast-food chain, to switch to cane sugar Coke was evidence that his Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement was 'winning'.
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