Wilton: One of the more annoying – yet largely hidden – costs of federal controls on sugar (keeping sugar prices artificially high) has been the diminution in quality of the taste of soft drinks. When I was a child – at about the time of the Boer War! – soda pop was made almost exclusively with sugar, and the flavor was delightful. With the costs of sugar elevated by federal regulation, the soft-drink manufacturers had to turn to lower-priced corn syrup as a sweetener. Those of us who lived – and consumed soda pop – in those days, can testify to the substantial taste differential.

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