Consumers have been told for years how bad soda is for the body. It doesn't matter if the drink is regular or diet. Even if we're not sure exactly what is so bad, it's supposedly common knowledge that it is.

I know that I shouldn't, but I do drink a little coke every day. I'm not a coffee person, so I have a cup of Coca Cola in the morning. So I really did not want to know precisely what Coke does to the body. I found an article over at Healthbolt that breaks down, step by step, what happens when you drink Coke. It is not a pretty picture. The article claims you're hit with a sugar rush, it leaches calcium and other vitamins from your body and flushes them out with a diuretic effect.**

Didn't Coca Cola come out with a vitamin-added beverage? What happens to those vitamins? I drink way more water than anything else, but I don't want to give up my morning Coke. So, anything in moderation?


**I have been informed that this article is mostly sensationalized and partly false. Please, only take the information with a grain of salt.

Everyone nowadays is concerned about the environment. Big business is especially concerned with its image. It wants the valuable consumers that a good green image can bring.

Coca Cola is no different, of course. The soft drink giant has already taken a number of steps to green-ify its image. The beverage maker has already pledged to recycle all of its plastic packaging in the US. Now it's time to tackle aluminum. Coca Cola has now decided that it will recycle 100% of the aluminum cans produced in the US.

To coordinate everything, the drink maker even created a whole division dedicated to collecting and recycling all of its waste packaging. Coca Cola Recycling just built a plant in South Carolina. The division says that the aluminum recycling initiative will use 95% less energy and reduce carbon emissions by 95% than creating new cans.

So here you go; another big company working to beef up its green image. I think it's great. A company as big as Coca Cola recycling all of its waste can make a huge impact on what goes in the landfills. It also makes a lot of business sense. So this kind of thing is a win-win for everyone.

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?")

If you had put money on the fact that Coke Zero would have fallen flat by now, as so many other remakes of favorite colas have in the past, there is a good chance that you would have lost your bet. Coca-Cola is planning to give the zero-calorie brand a big push this year to raise its profile and to try and make the brand a standard choice for cola drinkers ("[build] it into the next mega-brand," according to a company memo), not just an alternative to Coca Cola Classic.

The first part o the strategy is to sink a lot of money into the advertising budget. Coke is planning to spend $13 million on advertising during, and at, NCAA games alone, since its target audience is men up to age 45 or so who want a zero-calorie drink without the perceived girliness of Diet Coke. The company is also planning black packaging, football sponsorships and TV ads on "24" and MTV. To show exacty how serious they are about the brand, Coke is also actively recruiting restaurants to make Coke Zero a part of their soda fountain lineup. Wendy's and White Castle are two that have already agreed.

In India, the government is a little less subtle than other governments about their desire to prevent consumers from being exposed to products they deem to be unhealthy. New York, for example, is trying to get restaurants to list their calorie counts on their menus so that people can make an informed decision and choose (hopefully) the lower calorie item. Delhi , on the other hand, has decided to ask for schools and universities to ban sodas, citing sodas as an unhealthy form of junk food.

Coke, in a statement, said that the amount of Coke sold at universities and schools was very small and that they have been supporting campaigns that promote active lifestyles and sporting events in India.

Following India's attempt to get Coke and Pepsi to turn over their recipes to the government earlier this year, it is hard to believe that this is not a health-related move as much as a symbolic political one, trying to get back at the companies after their efforts were unsuccessful. This is especially true when you consider that "the country [has]some of the worst infant and maternal mortality rates in the world" and some of the most extreme poverty.

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?

The calls for restrictions on how much and how often food is advertised to children have not gone unheard. While some companies previously cut their kids' advertising, a new initiative shows that more are getting involved. Ten of the largest food and beverage manufacturers in the US, including McDonald's and Coca-Cola, vowed that at least half of their "advertising directed at children under the age of 12 would promote healthier foods or contain messages that encourage healthy lifestyles." The companies also agreed not to advertise at elementary schools and to promote only healthy or nutritious foods in most forms of marketing, including in interactive games, which were a primary concern to many who felt that they children would not realize it was advertising.

Critics are predictably critical. Instead of viewing this as a step forward in the battle against childhood obesity, which is how many parents and politicians see it, they simply state that this isn't good enough. The industry is planning to self-regulate and executives could not cite specific changes that would result from this decision. On the other hand, given that nothing like this has been done before, it is not surprising that it is hard to say what, precisely, will be the result. In any event, a decision to work towards promoting a healthy lifestyle is far better than the total ban on advertising that the critics want.

After months and months of green and white tea based products, including Enviga, green tea lattes and even green tea vodka, some beverage companies are starting to go back to black teas as the inspiration for their drinks. Nestle and Coca Cola announced this week that they would be concentrating their joint venture project on black tea-based beverages after the group has rolled out Enviga in Europe in early 2007.

The green tea craze was all in the name of the various health benefits that have been attributed to it. Black tea is still a consumer favorite, however, and now there are studies that have shown that drinking any kind of tea can be good for your health, so there is no reason to stay away from it as a drink option. On top of that, green tea seems to have oversaturated the market for the time being and people are probably ready for a change. It will be interesting to see what the group comes up with, since green tea drinks tended to be far more innovative than the average flavored ice tea and perhaps some of the inspiration for those drinks will be applied to black teas now.

Coca Cola will be making its first entry into the alcoholic beverage market in Australia. The soda company has partnered with SABMiller to promote three types of beers, Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Miller genuine Draft and Pilsner Urquell. Currently, all three beers are sold in Australia, but they only make up 0.13% of the 1.6 billion liter per year beer market. All will be marketed as premium brands.

The speedy growth rate in the premium beer sector (up 15% over 5 years) explains why Coca Cola is interested in expanding beyond sodas, which have remained steady and without increase over the same time period in the country.

Though Coke will not be releasing its own brand of beer at the moment, one has to wonder if the company will eventually branch out into that sector, which seems as though it could be more likely if this venture is a success.

The highest court in India has demanded that Coca-Cola and Pepsi reveal the chemical composition and ingredients of their products after a study that was released on Wednesday showed that the soft drinks contain high levels of insecticides.

The two presiding justices have given both Coca Cola and Pepsi just four weeks to submit a reply, otherwise the court will suspend sales in India. However, Shreyas Patel, a lawyer at Fox Mandal Little realizes that "no one is going to give away a 120-year-old secret, especially in a country like India. Someone would go and make it themselves."

Obviously, he never met these ladies, who already have.

Coca-Cola is hoping that the UK release of Coke Zero, nicknamed "Bloke Coke" because it targets a young, male audience, will help reverse a decline in the sales of carbonated beverages in the country. When Coke Zero was launched in Australia with a similar marketing strategy, total sales skyrocketed 19% in only two months. Its marketing campaign, which included a fake blog and other tricks that were decried by media watchdogs, worked well and didn't seem to put consumers off, meaning that Coke actually has its strategy down well for selling Coke Zero.

Coke Zero is, if you haven't had it, a calorie-free soda that is meant to taste more like regular Coke and fill a gap in the marketplace left by Diet Coke, which some perceive as a girly product.

Speaking of girly vs non-girly, Coke Zero was released with black cans and labels in Australia, but white in the US. Which is it in the UK?

 

Three people were charged yesterday by federal prosecutors for stealing confidential information from the Coca-Cola Company's Atlanta Headquarters. Joya Williams, administrative assistant to a top executive, Ibrahim Dimson and Edmund Duhaney "were arrested on charges of wire fraud and unlawfully stealing and selling Coke trade secrets," federal prosecutors said. Specifically, they stole insider documents and a bottled sample of one of Coke's newest, unreleased products and were planning to sell them to Coke rival, PepsiCo.

Dimson contacted Pepsi via a letter, mailed in an official Coca-Cola envelope, and asked for more than $80,000 for the stolen documents and drink sample. Pepsi contacted Coke and the authorities were brought in. The investigation culminated when an undercover FBI agent offered to pay $1.5 million for other trade secrets from Coke.

Both Coke and Pepsi complied with and assisted the FBI and other authorities during their investigation. Coke says that it will be difficult to overcome this "breach of trust" from Williams, who "[rifled] through corporate files and [stuffed] documents and a new Coca-Cola product into a personal bag" - actions which were caught on the company surveillance videos - and that they will review its "review its information protection policies, procedures and practices."

Today, the American Beverage Association and its members agreed to voluntarily remove sugary sodas from public schools across the country. Companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Cadbury Schweppes are all members of the ABA. Public high schools that still permit diet sodas will still be able to buy them for their campuses, and they will also be sold drinks that are considered have some nutritional value, juice, sports drinks and low-fat milk, though whole milk will no longer be offered because of its calorie content. Elementary and middle schools will only be sold unsweetened juice, low-fat milk and water. Part of the reason that the soda companies have agreed to this deal, which was made in conjunction with the William J. Clinton Foundation, is that on-campus soda sales make up a very small percentage of their overall sales, not to mention that a voluntary withdrawal looks better, from a PR perspective, than being banned.

 

I have to admit that I had mixed feelings about tasting Coca-Cola Blak. After I mentioned its release a few weeks ago, the amount of hype seemed to go through the roof. People loved the idea or people hated the idea; there was no middle ground. I assumed that I would not really like it before I tried it. After all, a drink that was hyped as much as Blak couldn't be good - could it? The thing that I failed to take into consideration is that I love coke and I love coffee. I also really liked Coca Cola Blak.

Let me say that it is definitely not a soda for everyone. I almost felt like I was cupping a coffee, which is the process where you sip and sniff and seek out all the underlying flavors in a sample of coffee. The coffee flavor was strong enough that I automatically looked for flavor notes, which I found. The drink tastes quite strongly of caramel, or perhaps burnt sugar without any bitterness, and there are similar fruity notes to the ones I like in my coffees. There was a good amount of bubbles - not so much as to be distracting, but Blak still fizzed like mad when poured into a glass. The only negative is that it is quite sweet. I wouldn't mind a small reduction in sweetness, but overall, they did pretty well with this drink.

Did it taste like coca cola? Not really, but it did taste good.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

Out of all the food trends we heard about back in December and January, there was one that is clearly becoming a big deal on th packaged food scene: miniature packaging, aka 100-calorie packs. "100 calories!" seems to be the hot new slogan on food products these days. The past three years have seen the market for portion-controlled packets go from 0 to more than 25 different foods. USA Today reports that 18 of the new products were introduced in 2005 alone. With more coming along this year, there is no indication that this trend is slowing.

Some of the newer products include 100-calorie sodas from brands like Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Shasta. These sodas have a mere 8-ounces per can, fewer than the more standard 12-ounces, and are marketed as being more portable than their full-sized counterparts. Coco-Cola says that they're marketed at consumers who wish to "improve their snacking and drinking opportunities."