Coke… Not always the real thing

Well technically it’s still Coke by branding alone, but as for the recipe…  Well I noticed the first day we arrived in the U.S.A. that it tasted different to the Coke I was used to back in Australia.

Due mainly to the substitution of an ingredient.  Coke in Australia uses sugar, while Coke here uses HFCS, or High Fructose Corn Syrup.  A horrible sweetening agent that’s found in absolutely everything.  Well almost, it just seems like everything here is sweetened.  Even bread is sweet.  Yuck.

As anyone who’s been reading my blog for a while now will know, I have a lot of trouble ordering Coke here in the U.S.A., my guess is primarily it’s because of my accent (Australian), and that in many cases that I’ve seen, that the person I’m speaking too is either stupid, ignorant, or just plain not paying attention.
So understandably I’ve been drinking a lot of non-Coke drinks.  Mainly water and sparkling water, as I’m not generally a big drinker of flavoured beverages anyway.

However, recently Mark discovered that there is such an animal as “Kosher Coke”, he discovered this while looking for items for Passover, which is coming up shortly, as he’s Jewish.

Kosher Coke is made the same way as Australian Coke, no HFCS, just sugar, apparently it’s hard to find.  But we found some last night while shopping at a supermarket in an area that has a large Jewish population, and of course bought several bottles.

As a side note, if you get a chance to buy Kosher Passover Chocolate (Alprosa?? or something like that), it’s brilliant.  But don’t get me started on chocolate.  That’s crap here too!  I mean, who puts Glycerine into Chocolate?  Blurgh.  We brought chocolate back with us on a recent trip, and there’s more on its way in the post as we speak.  To all you Americans out there, I’m sorry to be picking on your Coke and Chocolate, but as far as those items go, you do brilliant steaks. ;)  I’m serious, you do.  I may bitch about some things here, but your steaks are absolutely brilliant!

Anyway… Kosher Coke…  Here’s an article that was recently on the Australian newspaper site The Age, the details are below to maintain data integrity should the link be removed.

It’s not just me that has Coke issues.  ;)   Oh, and to the author… Nice tie in to the Jewish holiday *sigh*… “pass over”.

Enjoy!

Kosher Coke too sweet to pass over
Jenny Kleeman, London
March 21, 2007

AMERICAN Coca-Cola connoisseurs are celebrating the start of the most important season in their calendar. They say the perfect can of Coke is only available for a few weeks a year — and if you want the authentic taste of the Real Thing, you need to buy the Jewish Thing.

Passover begins on April 2. For eight days, observant Jews keep kosher for Passover by not consuming any product containing grains, apart from matzo, eaten in place of bread. This poses a problem in the US, where cheap high-fructose corn syrup has been used instead of sugar to sweeten American Coke since the drink’s relaunch in 1985. Corn is a grain, so Coke isn’t kosher.

The company has responded by manufacturing a limited quantity of Kosher Coke, sweetened with sugar, in cans and bottles with “OU-P” or “Kosher L’Pesach” printed in Hebrew on a yellow cap. Kosher Coke is only available during March and April in areas with high Jewish populations, such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Boston.

Kosher Coke has been hard to find in recent years because non-Jewish aficionados are bulk-buying the product while stocks last. They say sugared Coke doesn’t have the cloying aftertaste associated with corn syrup, and could be less harmful to your health, as recent research has shown a link between increased consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and the growing incidence of obesity and type 2 diabetes.

The Kosher Coke buzz began on online message boards in early February. “Woohoo!” exclaimed Zap, a sugar-fuelled member of BevNet.com. “I’ve had to ration the remaining cans from last year’s stash — there are only about nine left!”

The Coca-Cola Company insists that this sugar rush is misplaced. “We have heard that our kosher-for-Passover Coca-Cola is popular with a variety of consumers,” says spokesman Scott Williamson. “However, consumer taste testing indicates that the final products are equivalent in taste.”

Non-American consumers keen to sample this new variety need not necessarily rush to the US. In 500 millilitres of Australian Coke, according to a 2006 Choice survey, there are 10½ teaspoonsful of sugar.

GUARDIAN