Troll Echos

Living in America has all soda drinkers very used to things like sodium benzoate (to preserve freshness) and high fructose corn syrup in their day to day bubbly sugar water consumption.  Down in the Caribbean however, corn is missing, sugar cane is grown everywhere, and preservatives are not something you are likely to find in anything you eat or drink.  This produces an interesting opportunity indeed.  One where a soda drinker can enjoy outstandingly delicious soda.

My soda of choice here in America is Coka-Cola.  Good old fashioned high test sugar laiden brown bubble water.  Sadly the ingredients on the American version of Coke include things like “Sugar and/or High Fructose Corn Syrup”, which to me indicates that they mix all their sweeteners together and at the end have honestly no clue how much of each ends up in each bottle.  Presumably they mix them and the desired ratio ends up in each bottle or the flavor of a bottle of Coke would vary widely, and it clearly doesn’t vary much at all.  Down in the tropics however, something wonderful was waiting for me behind that red label I know so well.

At first I never even thought to look at the ingredients.  I opened a bottle of Coke from our well stocked mini-fridge and took a sip.  Something was very wrong.  It was like Coke, but not exactly.  It was delicious.  Outstandingly delicious.  I sat there with the bottle in my hand and felt a bit like a polar bear that just enjoyed another Christmas Coca-Cola.  A grin, a feeling of peace.  Heck, it was soda nirvana.  I slowly twisted the bottle around to find the nutritional information panel and the ingredient list so I could see why this Coke tasted so much better than any I’d ever had.  The nutritional information panel was entirely missing.  No calories, no carbs, no fat, no nothing.  The ingredients however was a shorter list than I’d ever seen on a bottle of Coke and revealed exactly why this bottle I held in my hand brought a smile to my face like no other bottle of soda ever has before.

Ingredients:  Carbonated Water, Sugar, Caramel Colour, Phosphoric Acid, Natural Flavors, Caffeine.

That was it.  Real sugar.  100%.  And no preservatives at all.  To my friends at Coke:  Please offer this recipe here in America.  It’s so much better than the version you sell here I could hardly imagine drinking standard American Coke ever again, and would happily pay a premium if required to get “the good stuff.”