#118 What Do They Call Mulligans in Monrovia?

Those of a certain age—like Donald Trump—were born into a world where all Coca-Cola was sweetened with cane sugar. In the ensuing 8 decades, we have had the replacement of cane sugar with high-fructose corn syrup, and the introduction of low- and no-calorie Cokes, using various combinations of saccharin and aspartame and acesulfame potassium (and don’t even get us started on stevia and sucralose). Trump allegedly drinks a dozen (hardly healthful) Diet Cokes a day, so once again his desire to make the rules when he doesn’t play the game is, at the very least, annoying. For both the sakes of MAGA and MAHA, he has told Coke to go back to cane sugar, just like the good old days (and, coincidentally, just like Mexico, one of the USA’s archenemies). Trump claims that Coke has subsequently bent the knee, whereas Coke has claimed, well, not much of anything. Typical.

For the record, C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁ and C₆H₁₂O₆ are roughly as similar chemically as their formulas would suggest, one being a disaccharide and the other being a monosaccharide mix. In other words, to the scientific world, six of one, half a dozen of the other: sugar is sugar. To the heads of the crack scientific team at the White House, one is death in a can and the other is nectar from Mount Olympus, the source of the gods’ eternal life. 

Those who rely on the present administration for their science are getting what they pay for.