[Fargren]

Fortunately, in most of the world sodas use sugar instead of syrup. So it's not as bad as it could be.

[throwit1979]

Except it takes about 5 seconds for sucrase in your small intestine to hydrolyze sugar into exactly the same substances present in HFCS. So it doesn't matter. At all.

[pyre]

Most HFCS in use today is a mixture of 45% glucose / 55% fructose. Sucrose is 1 glucose molecule and 1 fructose molecule bonded together. If fructose is really the 'bad' thing here, then HFCS has more of it.

[donaldc]

It can be even worse than that. Studies have found some HFCS to contain as much as 65% fructose.

[stevep98]

If you want to scrutinize american sodas, I think you have to look at the portion size and culture of free refills rather than the sugar type.

I don't know of anywhere else in the world that has serving sizes as big as the US. And very few places outside the US offer free refills.

[yen223]

Isn't syrup just water with sugar? How is that worse?

[ekianjo]

He's referring to fructose syrup. To replace sugar, which is more expensive.