Mexican Coke contains no cane sugar

American Chemical Society coverage published in December 2024 and January 2026 revived a long-running argument over what is in Mexican Coke by pointing back to a 2014 paper that found no intact sucrose in tested bottles sold in the United States. The dispute is not over whether the drink was made with cane sugar at the factory, but over what chemists detected by the time the product was analyzed. In the lab results highlighted by ACS Reactions, the sugar present was glucose and fructose rather than unhydrolyzed sucrose. Social posts on May 22 recirculated that claim and framed it as proof that “Mexican Coke contains no cane sugar.” ### If the label says “made with cane sugar,” how can the lab find none? Sucrose is cane sugar, but sucrose is also a molecule made of one glucose unit and one fructose unit. In an acidic liquid, that bond can break through hydrolysis, a process chemists call inversion, leaving glucose and fructose in solution instead of intact sucrose. ACS’s soda explainer described that as the likely reason Mexican Coke could begin with cane sugar and still test later as glucose and fructose. (acs.org) The ACS Reactions page published on January 28, 2026 said its host had previously claimed Mexican Coke contained “no unhydrolyzed sugar,” then visited two chemistry professors to run further tests. The society’s earlier explainer from December 11, 2024 said a 2011 paper in the journal *Obesity* had already reported that Mexican Coke contained no cane sugar and instead showed “plenty of glucose and fructose.” (acs.org) ### Did researchers actually say Mexican Coke uses high-fructose corn syrup? The 2014 paper in *Nutrition*, titled “Fructose content in popular beverages made with and without high-fructose corn syrup,” examined sugar composition in commercial drinks. ACS’s summary of that line of work said the Mexican Coke samples showed glucose and fructose, which are also the main sugars found in high-fructose corn syrup. That is not the same as proving the bottler used HFCS instead of cane sugar at production. (acs.org) It means the analytical result at the time of testing matched an inverted-sugar profile. That distinction matters because invert sugar and HFCS can look similar in a basic composition test. ACS’s educational material says most soda sweetener chemistry comes down to glucose, fructose and sucrose in different forms and proportions. ### Where does the “97% inverted” figure come from? The “about 97%” figure circulated in social posts on May 22, but the clearest primary-source material surfaced in ACS Reactions pages available through ACS.org, not in the social post itself. (sciencedirect.com) Those ACS pages say Mexican Coke may reach consumers with little or no unhydrolyzed sucrose left, but the exact 97% figure was not visible in the ACS text snippets returned here. The number should therefore be treated as a claim circulating with commentary unless verified against the full underlying analysis. (acs.org) ### Does this mean Mexican Coke and U.S. Coke are chemically identical? No public source reviewed here says the two products are identical in every respect. ACS framed the issue more narrowly: the sweetener chemistry can converge because sucrose in an acidic soft drink can invert into glucose and fructose over time. Taste differences that drinkers report could still come from packaging, carbonation, formulation details, storage, or expectation, but those explanations would need separate evidence. (acs.org) ### What can readers verify next? ScienceDirect still lists the 2014 *Nutrition* article by Ryan W. Walker, Kelly A. Dumke and Michael I. Goran, and ACS Reactions has two public explainers dated December 11, 2024 and January 28, 2026 that summarize the chemistry dispute. Readers looking for the next step should check the full paper and any posted analytical methods behind the more recent “97% inverted” claim. (sciencedirect.com) (acs.org)