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.

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?)

And that headline is your first answer in this quiz over at AOL Food (via The Smoking Gun). Match the contract demand with the singer that makes the demand on their contract.

All the same names seem to pop up: Britney, Christina, Mariah, Celine, Madonna, and Paula Abdul. I didn't realize that Abdul even toured anymore, but she actually seems to have some reasonable demands when it comes to dressing room food. One diva demands NO TOMATO, APPLE, OR GRAPE JUICES. And another wants only Diet Coke - IN CANS!

For the record, I only got 3 out of 10. I guess I don't know my divas.

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?")

Subway restaurants released a new nationwide Fresh Fit menu in their stores yesterday, in hopes of promoting 'better for you' food choices for adults and children. Apparently the menus have been designed to suit active lifestyles, meet the American Heart Association's nutritional standards, and help combat childhood obesity.

Adult combo meals include a choice of one of their existing low-fat 6" sub sandwiches that contain six grams of fat or less, your choice of Diet Coke, water, or 1% milk, as well as your choice of sliced apples, raisins, or Baked Lay's. The combo meal for kids is quite similar, though just a little smaller and with a few less choices. They will receive a 4" low-fat sub, 1% milk or apple juice, and the choice of raisins or apples.

Apparently though, the introduction of this new menu comes with the removal of their low-carb wraps. Formerly displaying the Atkins logo, the wraps remained on the menu even after they stopped advertising them under the diet chain name. Further proof that the low-fat rather than low-carb trend has once again arrived.

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?

At this point, we all know what happens when you combine Mentos and Diet Coke, but what about combinations of other sodas with other candies? Will they produce similar, or perhaps even more spectacular, results? Thanks to a video linked to by Brian, from Candy Addict, we now know the answer to this subset of life's little mysteries. These film makers bravely tested the following combinations in the name of science: candy corn and root beet, Sweetarts and Sprite and Toucan Toes and milk. Check out the video above to see their results.

I think we'll all sleep a little better tonight, although not quite as good as I'll sleep once I learn where I can get some of those Toucan Toes....

Mentos may once have been known as "the freshmaker," but we now know them best for the reaction that occurs when they are submerged in Coke. To cash in on their newfound glory, Mentos has created the Mentos Geyser contest, where entrants will compete to see whose homemade geyser reigns supreme. The videos must be no longer than 2 minutes and have to feature a regular Mentos (not sugar free) being dropped into "a plastic bottle of a carbonated beverage of any brand." There is a video tool kit available to contestants, which contains the Mentos logo, jingle and other graphics that might be useful. Entries must be submitted to YouTube by September 30th, 2006.

Prizes include up to 1000 iTunes downloads, a year's supply of Mentos (320 rolls) and various Mentos merchandise. Not to mention that everyone will have the chance to watch people making soda fountains of their own.

May the best geyser win!

This may be the oddest article I've posted here, but hear me out.

I was a Pepsi drinker for years and years and years. Nothing really against Coke, it's just that I thought that Pepsi tastes differently, better, than Coke, so I always got Pepsi. Then, about five or six years ago, when I switched to drinking diet soda, I started drinking Coke. I don't know why. I think one night I went to the store to get some Pepsi, they were out of Diet, so I sent with Diet Coke instead. And for the past several years, out of taste and habit, I've bought Diet Coke.

Now I find myself going back and forth between the two. Yeah, yeah, I know, in America you're supposed to be a "Pepsi person" or a "Coke person," just like you're supposed to be a "Mac person" or a "PC person." (For the record, I'm a Mac guy.) It's not that I find that they taste the same. They don't. They taste very different, but I've learned to like them both.

Which is my very longwinded way of asking this question: I've noticed that Pepsi bottles often get some sort of film inside the bottle. Either condensation or some other scientific process I'd probably know if I paid attention in 7th grade science class. But I've noticed that Coke never gets this.

Anyone know why?

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.

Normally, I'd say that another post about Mentos and Diet Coke soda geyser phenomenon wouldn't be necessary. However, the folks at EepyBird.com have taken the plume of soda to new artistic levels. In a display that they liken to the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas, Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz let loose 200 liters of Diet Coke with the help of over 500 Mentos. During the roughly three minute display, the lab-coat-clad duo fire off soda from spinning pedestals, swings and arrays that seem better suited to fireworks rigs. EepyBird also has a decent explanation of the forces at work behind the magic. It's not just the gum arabic in Mentos that causes the fierce fizz, it's the texture of the candy that draws out the billions of bubbles.