Last night, while watching the Oscars (I was a little bummed that Viola Davis didn't win for her performance in Doubt, she was spectacularly good in that role), I was taken aback by the sight of Tom Colicchio in a commercial for Diet Coke. I've come to accept the bizarre product placements on Top Chef, but somehow, I always looked at Colicchio as a celebrity chef who was above shilling for vast corporations.

In the commercial, Colicchio walks through a fancy restaurant that is serving all manner of convolution appetizers and entrees, while his voiceover advocates for simple good taste. The whole thing culminates with him drinking an ungarnished glass of Diet Coke. It's a good message (the one about simplicity), but the whole thing leaves me feeling dirty and a little disappointed.

What do the rest of you think about the commercial?

Have you seen the label for Diet Coke Plus? Check that out to the right -- the soft drink claims that it's "Diet Coke with VITAMINS & MINERALS"! That means that Diet Coke is finally healthy, right? Not quite.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the FDA has sent Coca-Cola Co. a warning letter stating that the beverage doesn't contain enough vitamins and minerals to be considered "plus." That word is, apparently, reserved for the foods that have at least "10% more of the reference daily intake or daily reference value of a nutrient than a similar product." And they also note that it's not quite kosher to try and make a carbonated beverage fortified.

Coke has no plans to change their label, and the FDA is waiting for them to "take prompt action to correct these violations." So, it should be an exciting little war come the New Year.

So. Diet Coke kills sperm on contact. We thought you should know.

We feel sort of shocked, and also sort of remarkably unshocked.

Scientist Deborah Anderson and her team have been awarded one of this year's Ig Nobel Awards from Improbable Research for their work on both Coca Cola Classic and Diet Coke's contraceptive qualities.

Will this knowledge ever come in handy? Well, with a desperate situation and a little yoga, anything is possible. Never say never, right? Okay, yeah, maybe this once.

Other things we bet kill sperm: Jagermeister, Ramen Noodle broth, Tang, and everything at Taco Bell.

Have you heard about that science experiment where you drop a Mentos in a bottle of Diet Coke? The soda is supposed to explode into a fountain of cola.

This experiment was taken to greater heights this week in Leuvan, Belgium. 1,500 students simultaneously created the fountains in an attempt to break the previous record for the event. I have no idea what the previous record was, but I hope these kids broke it. With the mess they made, they deserve it.

Seems like Coca-Cola is coming full circle some 120 years after its invention by druggist John Stith Pemberton.

Well, sort of.

Yesterday the soft-drink giant unveiled the Coca-Cola Research Center for Chinese Medicine in Beijing.

Coca-Cola has set up a lab to experiment with new Chinese herbal flavors for Coke and other beverage products. It's the first international company to open such a facility at the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences. Coca-Cola plans to have its researchers develop beverages using Chinese herbal ingredients and formulas.

A Coca-Cola spokesperson had this to say "This collaboration will ultimately help us bring the insights and benefits of traditional Chinese medicine to consumers all over the world." And it should probably give them a bit more cred than Vitamin Water. Though to be frank, I'm not quite sure I'm ready for Diet Coke with ginseng.

We've all opened up a bottle of soda and have it get warm on us as it sits on the table. But what if there was a technology that actually made the drink stay cold even after you open it?

Coca-Cola is experimenting with a bottle that chills on the inside after you twist off the cap. They have to be stored in special vending machines so this is probably not something you'll be able to get at any supermarket. The bottle could be used on a new drink called Sprite Super Chill, which is going to be released in the UK later this year. No word yet on any use in the US anytime soon.

[via Boing Boing]

If you had asked me ten years ago whether I was a Diet Pepsi drinker or a Diet Coke drinker, I would have said Diet Pepsi without hesitation. I just liked Pepsi better (people who tell you that there isn't a difference between the two are either crazy or don't drink soda -- or maybe too much).

However, a few years ago, I noticed my local supermarket was always out of Diet Pepsi and I was forced to buy Diet Coke. Somehow, I got used to it and I've been drinking it exclusively now for a few years. But last month? I decided to buy Diet Pepsi again, and now I'm back to drinking that. Sorry to cheat on you, Diet Pepsi.

This is just a really tedious way to say Happy 25th Anniversary Diet Coke! It was unveiled on July 29, 1982 and is now the #1 diet beverage in the world.

(Oh, that headline. I think that was one of the slogans for Diet Coke in the '80s. Am I remembering that correctly?)

You all know that I have a serious Diet Coke addiction, right?

Well, if you didn't, now you do, and I have absolutely no intention of going into rehab for it. I have "quit" many a vice of my wild and trashy days, but Diet Coke is the one thing that I intend to hang onto to keep my life interesting.

However, I do know how horribly horrible the stuff is. Dark soda stains your teeth. Any soda wears down your enamel. The carbonation causes bloating. The caffeine causes jitters. There probably isn't a single good thing about Diet Coke.

Until now. I am talking about vitamins. Coca Cola has extended its Diet Coke line with Diet Coke Plus, which we mentioned at the end of last year. The soda isn't a drink to compete with the multitude of energy drinks out there, but something to ameliorate the damage of drinking nothing but trash (that's not part of the marketing, just my opinion) with added vitamins and minerals. I was skeptical about how much better for my health this would really be, and even moreso, about the taste (does anyone remember the disastrophe that was "New Coke?")

Coca-Cola is planning to launch a new version of Diet Coke in 2007. No, this isn't going to be like the disaster that was "New Coke" in the 1980s. The drink is actually going to be similar to the current Diet Coke, but it will be fortified with vitamins and minerals, meaning that people will have even more of a reason to opt for diet than just wanting to cut down on calories: they can do it for their health. Diet Coke Plus, as the drink is called, will be "the first nutrient-enhanced carbonated soda to be offered by a major brand" and will not replace the current Diet Coke, which is the best-selling sugar-free soda in the world.

A sugar-free, but nutrient-filled, drink will certainly have a lot of appeal in an increasingly health-conscious society, but is it enough to convert people to diet Coke from other sources of vitamins? Assuming that it ends up tasting like the standard diet Coke, would you give it a try?

For the article titled The New York Diet, New York magazine asked a sample of five New Yorkers to write down everything they ate for a week. The project was meant as a small comparison to the book Everything I Ate, which is one New Yorker's photo diary of everything he ate for a year.

Overall, the piece is fascinating, and I think that part of the appeal of reading through these lists is the same thing that keeps people reading food blogs: you get to eat vicariously through someone else's writing/photography. You also get to learn a few things about the lifestyle of the person you're reading about. For example, I learned that the 10th grader's diet was pretty frightening, with lots of candy and fast food, and also noticed that New Yorkers generally eat dinner later than I do.