Coca-Cola walks the MAHA tightrope

For decades, Americans who wanted cane-sugar Coke had to hunt for Mexican imports or hoard the special “Passover” batches that occasionally slipped into stores in the spring. So when Coca-Cola promised a permanent U.S. version of the real-sugar soda in late July, it landed as more than a recipe tweak — but it’s worth noting: the original, high-fructose corn syrup Coke isn’t going anywhere. This is an addition, not a replacement.

To “Make America Healthy Again” supporters, it looked like a triumph: proof that they’d forced one of the world’s most powerful food companies to abandon, if only in some small part, the much-maligned high-fructose corn syrup, a bogeyman of nutrition debates since the 1980s. The timing was less coincidence than choreography. A week earlier, President Donald Trump