It's really tough seeing the amount of sugar that this recipe has. Really puts things into perspective, compared to simply drinking the end product from a can.
We know that sodium consumption can be drastically reduced by adding salt at table rather than adding it directly to food. Why doesn't this happen with sugar? Why not make desserts that take advantage of the fact that surface sugar will make it seem to be sweeter than it actually is and just have table sugar?
1) Care about their customers' health, which they have no reason to
2) Be willing to risk brand damage by exposing how much sugar is in their garbage
3) Be willing to "burden" users with the task of adding sugar which isn't "convenient"
It's far easier to just feed people garbage while you're making $$$
Some people like rituals with their addiction.
Seeing the sugar being added may create the perception of more sweetness than there is. (But also guilt, so it can go both ways).
And dessert basically goes the same way -- I honestly can't even imagine what something like a cherry pie would be if it were cooked without sugar, and then you were expected to dump sugar on top. But it would not be good.
The reason a chef "knows this" is because if you judged their food with or without salt, the salt one would win, so in the end they're required to add waaay to much salt, when the tongue just needs those surface crystals.
Healthier to salt after, and therefore cook your own food.
It does not, and that can (and has been!) be empirically shown. Salt gets into the food and changes both chemical properties and how it responds to cooking. Pre-seasoned meats, for example, are more tender.
If you prefer to salt at the table, by all means, eat your food however you like it, but it is simply false to claim that there's no difference or "chefs just add too much salt".
It's not. Unless you have hypertension or some other medical condition around salt, there's no reason to restrict your salt intake.
For the average person, the level of salt in restaurant food has no unhealthy effects whatsoever. Amounts in excess of your daily requirement are simply excreted in urine.
Many athletes especially in very hot climates need high sodium, sometimes up to 8 grams a day.
I'm aware that aspartame isn't ideal, but I'm not brave enough to give up sweet-tasting beverages yet. :-)
Back then I was also packing lunches for my wife, and she wanted a bottle of commercial fruit juice to have with lunch. We'd buy a large bottle to save money and pour some into a smaller bottle for transport. I mentioned my experiment and she said "I'd like it if you had me try it with the juice" -- so I started doing it. A few days later she brought it up again, "Can we start diluting my juice I'm taking in?" and I told her she'd already been having diluted juice.
These days I fall into "water is the real adult beverage" but I always keep in mind just how sweet things are commonly made.
We have a 1st-gen Coke freestyle machine in my workplace. On the rare occasion I go for it, I pick a zero-sugar variant, and I dilute it with 50% sparkling water otherwise every single flavor is way, WAY too sweet for me.
Like coffee: I like a hint of sweet in my espresso, but Cola is like dumping 4-5 spoons in a small cup of coffee. Becomes sugar syrup and that's all one can taste anymore.
Because undiluted coca cola is just honestly not very good, and extremely uh, I'm not sure how to put it, practically pungent
They definitely have not. You just like sugary things better as a kid.
It's kind of like, the summer camp I went to as a kid, and recently revisited as an adult -- they shrunk all the buildings and fields in size by half! Or so it certainly seemed, I could have sworn...
I can't eat the candy I ate as a kid either. Now, 85% dark chocolate on the other hand...
The water/sugar ratio for the OpenCola syrup is nearly 1:1, which is the same ratio as simple syrup [1].
0: https://github.com/cognitom/OpenCola/blob/master/recipe.mark...
No matter how bad you think artificial zero calorie sweeteners are, they are nothing compared to the damage that too much sugar does to your body.
Refined sugar is certainly not good for you, but a 12oz can of Coke - is 140 calories. That's about 6% of the recommended daily caloric intake.
Calories RDI is about 2000-2500 for most people. But most Americans eat more like 3000-3500 and don't exercise.
You can drink a 12 oz can of Coke every day and it's not even a blip on the radar. (A 64 oz tub of it, of course, is a different story.) What people need to do to be healthy is not overeat by 1,000 calories a day while never exercising. That combo will send you to an early grave, the can of Coke in a diet that otherwise hits the right macros, will not.
When I drink Coke, it becomes the primary way I hydrate. So five, six cans a day is not uncommon.
I can't speak for everyone, but I've known plenty of other people who end each workday with 5+ cans of Coke on their desk.
Personally, when I was drinking coke regularly, I was >30% body fat. Now that I've cut Coke completely from my diet, I am ~15%.
Honestly though, I would love for these facts to not be true for me. I miss Coke dearly. It's my favorite drink.
Only that blood sugar levels also affect hunger, psyche etc.
So no, you cannot just sum up calories in that case.
% of Caloric RDI isn't the whole story. A can of Coke is less of a blip on the radar as you suggested.
[0] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/carbohydrates/a...
I'm surprised this is not common knowledge, but I guess people in general don't read labels.