Why American Coke tasting different from Mexican Coke is a national security issue

Sugar, corn, beets, tariffs, and Ernst Stavro Blofeld

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In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Telly Savalas’ Blofeld threatened to destroy entire food crops. Because why not.

Blofeld’s plan was to blackmail the whole world by threatening to destroy whole species of crops and livestock with his evil bacteriological agents. Just a movie, but it’s also something that happens in the real world. In WWII, Germany used anthrax against Allied livestock, and the US explored targeting Japan’s rice crops with rice blast. In the Cold War, the US developed the M115 “feather bomb” to disperse wheat stem rust spores against enemy crops. In the 1980s, Iraq tested the dispersal of a fungal agent over Iraqi crops. There are many more examples.

So maintaining food security is an important national security concern for every nation. In the United States, it’s mainly corn that we can grow in nearly unlimited amounts. We want that ability preserved, should we need it in the event of biological warfare; and that’s one reason the US government provides subsidies to farmers. We need their production capacity as a matter of national security, even if we don’t need everything they could grow today.

And also, people all over the world like Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola is made with sugar. In much of the world, cane sugar is cheap and plentiful, so that’s what soda makers use. Except in the United States, where it’s made with corn-based High Fructose Corn Syrup, and has been for about 40 years. Why?