Coca-Cola has laid out plans to launch a product made with US cane sugar this year, days after Donald Trump claimed the company had agreed to replace high-fructose corn syrup.
The company announced the change in a quarterly earnings report released on Tuesday.
On a conference call with investors, Coca-Cola’s chairperson and CEO, James Quincey, said the company planned “to expand our trademark … product range with US cane sugar to reflect consumer interest in differentiated experiences”.
Quincey said the new offering would “complement” Coca-Cola’s core portfolio of drinks, suggesting it could arrive as an alternative, rather than a replacement, for its flagship Coke product.
“This is really an ‘and’ strategy and not an ‘or’ strategy,” Quincey said, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We are going to continue to use a lot of the corn syrup that we do now.”
The drink maker’s Mexican Coke is made with cane sugar and already sold in the US – but often at nearly twice the price.
Additionally, the US doesn’t make enough cane sugar to satisfy demand in the country.
Tuesday’s announcement from Coca-Cola came as food and drink companies have rolled out plans to make changes amid “Make America healthy again” (Maha) campaign of the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.
However, experts say that drinks made with cane sugar instead of corn syrup are not necessarily healthier.
Eva Greenthal, senior policy scientist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a non-profit consumer advocacy group, previously told CNN: “Excess consumption of sugar from any source harms health. To make the US food supply healthier, the Trump administration should focus on less sugar, not different sugar.”
Coca-Cola had defended its use of corn syrup – a product some blame for soaring US obesity rates – after Trump claimed on 16 July he had convinced the brand to switch to using sugar cane in its US drinks.
“I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so. I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola,” the president said in a social media post.
“This will be a very good move by them – You’ll see. It’s just better!”
Coca-Cola said in a statement that “high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) – which we use to sweeten some of our beverages – is actually just a sweetener made from corn. It’s safe; it has about the same number of calories per serving as table sugar and is metabolized in a similar way by your body.”
It added that the American Medical Association (AMA) “has confirmed that HFCS is no more likely to contribute to obesity than table sugar or other full-calorie sweeteners”. And it said: “Please be assured that Coca-Cola brand soft drinks do not contain any harmful substances.”
In 2023, the AMA released a statement saying it recognized “that at the present time, insufficient evidence exists to specifically restrict use of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) or other fructose-containing sweeteners in the food supply or to require the use of warning labels on products containing HFCS”.
Initially, the drinks giant responded with a neutral statement of appreciation for “president Trump’s enthusiasm” for Coke, and a vague message about “new innovative offerings within our Coca-Cola product range” to come.
The soft drinks company released an additional statement making positive claims about high-fructose corn syrup.
