Diet Coke + vitamins = healthy beverage!

Uh, no it doesn’t 15

drink to your health?

News flash: Coca-Cola has responded to consumer demand and is now producing "healthy" beverages.

"Diet and light brands are actually health and wellness brands," Coke's CEO E. Neville Isdell told The New York Times.

He was referring to a new product called Diet Coke Plus, which is Diet Coke plus a few vitamins.

Where do I start?

Diet Coke consists of artificially blackened water tinged with synthetic chemicals. Here are its ingredients, from most prevalent to least: carbonated water, caramel color, aspartame, phosphoric acid, potassium benzoate (to protect taste), natural flavors, citric acid; and caffeine [emphasis added].

To protect taste? What are people supposed to be tasting? Oh right, there it is: "natural flavors." Note that the swill contains more of the chemical designed to protect said flavors than the flavors themselves. Like mob bosses and presidents, I guess they need a lot of protection.

Seriously, though: Diet Coke is a nutritional void. Human bodies evolved to make use of a variety of foods, but I doubt isolated versions of phosphoric acid, etc., are among them. And aspartame, aka Nutrasweet, may cause active damage.

Can this questionable brew be made "healthy" by adding a few isolated nutrients, quite likely conjured up in the bustling labs of Archer Daniels Midland?

No, I don't think it works that way. Michael Pollan's recent New York Times Magazine piece exposed the absurdity of that notion. It turns out that systematically stripping nutrition out of food, and then adding it later in isolated form, is a bust. Isolated vitamins and other nutrients just don't pack the same benefits as when they occur in whole foods.

Then there's the question of aspartame. Italian researchers writing in Environmental Health Perspectives recently added (PDF) to a growing body of literature pointing to aspartame's possible role as a carcinogen.

Why would the FDA allow it? In 1981, a company called Searle owned the patent on aspartame, already known, paradoxically, as Nutrasweet. The company's CEO? Donald Rumsfeld -- not too far removed from serving as Gerald Ford's secretary of defense. Don't believe me? Check it out.

Then-president Ronald Reagan had appointed a man named Arthur Hull Hayes as his FDA chair. In 1981, Hayes approved aspartame over the objections of several internal panels.

Rummy, of course, would go on to greater things, but not before engineering the sale of Searle and its suddenly quite valuable Nutrasweet division to Monsanto (which in turn sold Nutrasweet to a private-equity firm).

As for Hayes, he exited the FDA and entered a robust career, which continues today, as a biotech exec and serial corporate board sitter.

The mind reels. I think I'll go eat an apple.

Grist food editor Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Follow my Twitter feed; contact me at tphilpott[at]grist[dot]org.

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  1. wiscidea Posted 3:15 pm
    07 Mar 2007

    Mountain Dew is more wholesome...It contains orange juice... really, read the label. I alleviate my guilt over this addiction by always keeping in mind that I'm drinking orange juice. Sure it is watered down, enchanced with added sugar and caffeine, contains brominated vegetable oil so it looks appealingly cloudy, and is preserved by the addition of EDTA...  well... it contains orange juice... and sucose is natural! So is caffeine. And vegetable oil. Very wholesome.
    I wonder whether they are working on an organic version. I'm tired of the person at the grocery store giving me a funny look as I put my organic eggs, milk, carrots et cetera on the conveyer belt... followed by a 24-pack of Mountain Dew. Apparently she finds it amusing.

    Forward!

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  2. TariffDude Posted 4:59 pm
    07 Mar 2007

    Nice rant,and speaking of conspiracies involving the FDA, have you heard of the possible suppression of the miracle fruit in the 70's?

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  3. Tom Philpott's avatar

    Tom Philpott Posted 9:20 pm
    07 Mar 2007

    Consiracy?Not in my piece. i just pointed out that a very well-connecected CEO got a highly sketchy product through the FDA -- happens all the time.

    Victual Reality

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  4. Ron Steenblik Posted 11:56 pm
    07 Mar 2007

    France has fewer of these problemsMost adults here drink simply water -- lots of it -- during the day. (Wine is for meals.) While some people do drink international brands of soda pop, the French brands, like Orangina, tend to have a bit higher percentage of natural ingredients than diet coke: carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup [boo! hiss!] and/or sugar, orange and other citrus juice concentrate, citrus fruit pulp, citric acid, phosphoric acid, guarana extract, natural flavor, caffeine, artificial color.
    One popular children's' "soda", Brut de Pomme is for the most part carbonated apple juice, with no added sugar or corn syrup. Its ingredients are: apple juice from concentrate (60%), carbonated water, apple aroma, and citric acid and malic acid, both of which are derived from fruit.

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  5. wiscidea Posted 1:17 am
    08 Mar 2007

    carbonated fruit juiceRon!
    Is the carbonated apple juice or something similar available in the United States? I would like to try it.
    Thanks.

    Forward!

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  6. Delay And Deny's avatar

    Delay And Deny Posted 1:43 am
    08 Mar 2007

    Brawndo Corporation

    How long before Diet Coke + Vitamins + Electrolytes gets pumped through the water system.

    The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.

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  7. Ron Steenblik Posted 2:43 am
    08 Mar 2007

    Sorry, WiscideaI don't know. But you can always make your own simply by mixing fruit juice with carbonated water. That's what we do, and our son (who now, at the age of 13, drinks mainly water), used to love.

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  8. David Roberts's avatar

    David Roberts Posted 2:53 am
    08 Mar 2007

    Wiscidea,They don't have an apple flavor (yet), but let me highly recommend "Juice Squeeze" beverages by Crystal Geyser. They have exactly two ingredients: fruit juice and carbonated water. They satisfy my craving for carbonation without all the nasty syrup. I drink at least one a day -- you can get them in bulk at CostCo.
    http://www.crystalgeyserwater.com/juice_squeeze/cgw_js.ht ...

    www.grist.org

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  9. Ron Steenblik Posted 3:40 am
    08 Mar 2007

    Avoid drinking soft drinks from aluminum cansWhen my father worked for an element-analysis laboratory, back in the 1980s, he and his colleagues tested the aluminum content of various soft drinks and found that those poured from aluminum cans contained significant amounts of aluminum. The same was NOT the case for beer from aluminum cans. The culprit was the high acidity of soft drinks.
    As explained on this web site:
    The phosphoric acid in soft drinks, which leaches aluminum from the walls of the can, guarantees that each can of beverage delivers aluminum metal to the drinker.
    I apologize for not finding a more authoritative references than this web site, but it does at least provide a summary of the various sources and possible consequences of too much aluminum in the diet.

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  10. GreyFlcn Posted 5:38 am
    09 Mar 2007

    HrmmI wonder
    http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=1612321

    http://www.greenfacts.org/aspartame/aspertame-sweetener/1 ...

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  11. MagpieBard Posted 12:44 pm
    09 Mar 2007

    Hmm, that's worthlessDrink diet coke for the nutrition. That's.... a thought. A bad one, but a thought none the less. I have to wonder if the pitchman for the idea was able to sell it with a straight face?
    Now, I admit. I drink a can or two of soda a week, most often while out and about and having to choose between grey city tap water at my dining location of choice or just take the soda. I do it with the full knowledge that it's bad for me. (Same calm I greet the odd piece of cheesecake, and my once a year indulgence in fair fries, funnel cakes, and lemon shakeups.) When I want to have something thats good for me - most of the time - I do so. As long as you don't drink it 24-7 to the sole exclusion of more nutritious options I think its fine. But trying to say that it can be made GOOD for you? That's just surreal. And a little bit sad. While I grew up drinking Classic Coke, with this little brainchild being their newest offering... I think I'll just give it up. Not sure I want to send my money to people this dim - or desperate.
    Good article... and I'll join you on the apple.

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  12. jonny668 Posted 4:43 am
    25 Apr 2007

    Rest Assured: No Amluminum in Your SodaAt one point, aluminum did in fact leach its way from can to beverage. This, however, is no longer the case. Aluminum cans are lined with plastic to prevent this. Many references to this lining can ge found with a simple Google search and the doubtful can even do a little home experiment to confirm its existence personally.

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  13. wiscidea Posted 5:05 am
    25 Apr 2007

    Rest Assured??!!One prefer the aluminum over the plastic.
    Let see... consume small amounts of an element we are exposed to regularly on a massive scale via dust in the atmosphere... or consume chemicals leached from a plastic that might have been used for packaging food for only a few decades?
    I'll consume the aluminum. I doubt there is a significant quantity dissolved in the contents of the can.

    Forward!

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  14. caniscandida Posted 5:10 am
    25 Apr 2007

    "amluminum"This sounds like a sit-com situation: the dysfunctional room-mates, apprehensively studying from afar the can of pop on the kitchen counter, debating whether they should approach it with a stainless steel utensil, or with a wooden one.  Of course, everyone is wearing baking mittens.
    All because of a typo.
    Good for Magpie Bard, and his/her sense of festival, of holiday, of annual funnel cakes!  This is always what I say about Christmas and Easter: once a year, it cannot hurt you!
    (Umm, OK, let me rephrase that: so long as you use appropriate protection ... )

    Chickens are our cousins!

    So are other sensitive animals!

    Enough is enough!

    No more factory farms!

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  15. allisony Posted 3:12 am
    27 Oct 2007

    Coke PlusSo I am study to be a registered dietitian and I'm doing a project on minerals. Since there are virtually no articles on minerals, I picked the example of Coke plus adding vitamins and "minerals". What I am finding is that the only real mineral added to Coke Plus, besides the trace mineral Zinc, is magnesium. Of all the minerals, magnesium has the smallest daily value of 400 mg a day. With some calculations, I found that there is less magnesium in an 8 oz bottle than there is in 2 tablespoons of peanut butter. I realize that no drink is going to contain all your nutrition needs but for Coke to claim added vitamins and minerals, I think as most things, it's just another gimmick. Eat healthy, it's as simple as that.

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