President Donald Trump boasted that the Coca-Cola Company had agreed to use “real cane sugar” in its drinks sold in the United States after talks between him and the company’s management.
“I spoke with Coca-Cola about using REAL cane sugar in Coca-Cola in the United States and they agreed. Thank you to all the people responsible at Coca-Cola,” Trump wrote in a post on the social network Truth Social, quoted by Reuters.
A spokesman for Coca-Cola, based in Atlanta, said the company would announce details of the new products soon and that it appreciated the president’s enthusiasm for the brand. In the United States, Coca-Cola drinks are usually sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, while in other countries cane sugar is used.
The Trump administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) initiative — associated with the movement around Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — has been pressuring the food industry to reformulate its products, removing ingredients like artificial colors and sweeteners.
Kennedy has also criticized the excessive consumption of sugar in the American diet.
A May report by the MAHA commission — created by Trump to identify the causes of chronic disease — said that excessive use of high-fructose corn syrup may contribute to childhood obesity and other health problems. Medical experts recommend limiting added sugars but have found no significant differences between cane sugar and corn syrup, Reuters notes.
Corn producers, mainly concentrated in the Midwest, have long had strong influence on legislation in Washington. At the same time, Trump’s home state of Florida is the largest producer of sugarcane in the country.
“Replacing corn syrup with cane sugar makes no sense,” said John Bowd, president and CEO of the Corn Syrup Manufacturers Association. “This change would cost thousands of food industry jobs, reduce farmers’ incomes and increase imports of foreign sugar — for no nutritional benefit,” he said.
The White House has not commented on the matter.
The Trump administration has already approved requests from some states to exclude soft drinks from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), putting additional pressure on companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.
Illustrative Photo by Photo By: Kaboompics.com: https://www.pexels.com/photo/bottles-of-soft-coke-drink-on-white-background-4389674/
