Karen was forced to rescind on our lunch arrangements, leaving me somewhat up in the air. This is a figure of speech. I was not really up in the air. I was stood on the ground, and then shortly thereafter, sat back down in my chair.
So I went to the nearby sandwich shop for the first time in months. I used to go there every day, before realising exactly how much money I was wasting, and all the marvellous things that I could do with that money instead.
I purchased a can of Coca-Cola to go with my sandwich and my bag of crisps. Upon taking my first sip, I was unimpressed. It didn’t taste quite right. Close, but not close enough.
I turned the can over in my hand and realised the cause. Again, I didn’t *literally* turn the can over, because this would have resulted in the drink pouring over my lap. I actually rotated the can, whilst craning my neck to silly angles until I could read the (very helpfully) vertically-orientated text.
This drink had not been canned in the UK, but it was actually made to the US specification. For the last 22 years, Coca-Cola from the US has been made using High Fructose Corn Syrup, or HFCS, instead of sucrose. This is for the simple reason that it is cheaper, because importing sugar into the US is ridiculously expensive, and corn is ridiculously cheap. Other soft-drink manufacturers do it too, along with producers of other processed foods across the nation.
The Coca-Cola corporation, unsurprisingly enough, claim that there is no difference in flavour between Coke made with HFCS and Coke made with natural sugar. To which I counterclaim: O RLY? ((Now that O RLY has passed out of vogue, I feel like I can get away with saying it))