Coca-cola sucks

I've known that the non-diet coca-cola tastes like crap in the US and in Canada because it uses corn sweetener instead of sugar. I also knew that they use corn syrup because it's cheaper than sugar, now I know why:

ADM collects welfare because of two cleverly designed special deals. The first is the government's mandated minimum price for sugar. Because of the price supports, if a soft drink maker wants to buy sugar for its soda, it has to pay 22 cents a pound -- more than twice the world price. So Coca-Cola (and almost everyone else) buys corn sweetener instead. Guess who makes corn sweetener? ADM, of course. Now guess who finances the groups that lobby to keep sugar prices high? link

We use ethanol here in Brazil. Getting it from sugar cane is far more efficient and cheaper than with corn but:

ADM's second federal feeding trough is the tax break on ethanol. Ethanol is a fuel
additive made from corn, kind of like Hamburger Helper for gasoline, except that it's
more expensive, so no one would buy it if government didn't give companies that use ethanol a special 52-cent-a-gallon tax break. That costs the treasury half a billion
dollars a year. ADM produces half the ethanol made in America. same link

BTW, the price of ethanol has shot up here in Brazil. The price (when you take everything into account) is close to the price of Gasoline. The big problem now, is that the sugar cane group is very politically and economically powerful, so they can fix the price as high as they want. Also, planting sugar cane means they aren't planting something else. I'm going back to gasoline.

Here's another link about Coke and corn syrup.