"soft drink" news and stories

When most people choose a diet soda over a regular one, they are doing it for their waistline. In other words, they are only paying attention to the zero or low calorie number. Very rarely are they looking at the caffeine content.

If you are watching your caffeine intake, it's worth noting that most diet versions of their regular counterparts contain more caffeine. Though it's not the highest content among all diet drinks, Diet Coke has 30% more caffeine that regular Coke! To get an idea of how much of a difference there is, and to see how the diet sodas stack up against each other, Diet Blog has put together a list of the 10 Most Caffeinated Diet Drinks. Number one? Pepsi Max, with 69 mg of caffeine. As a reference point, 1 tsp of instant coffee powder has 57 mg of caffeine.

Of course, if you're "dieting," then you might actually appreciate that extra caffeine.

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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?

 

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The popular "un-cola," 7-Up, is now one hundred percent natural. Cadbury Schweppes put the beverage through a slight reformulation to remove an artificial preservative in the drink. A spokesperson for the company said that they expect sales to increase once the ad campaign publicizing the change kicks off next month, as consumers are more interested than ever in healthy products. The TV spots will show cans of 7-Up as fruits and vegetables, being picked from trees or dug from the ground, but the company will not claim that the drink has any specific health benefits.

[Image USA Today]

 

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We always enjoy hearing about strange new soft drinks here at Slashfood, and the most recent one to show up on my radar is Celsius. Its claim to fame is that its ingredients (which include caffeine) increase your body's metabolism, thereby helping you burn calories. Elite FX, the Delray Beach, Fla. company that makes Celsius, cites a study where the beverage was shown to increase metabolism by 12 percent over a three-hour period. They say you can lose 17 pounds a year, just by drinking a bottle a day for a year. I'm always skeptical of ways to lose weight without exercise, aren't you? Nevertheless, Celsius recently won "best new energy drink" from Beverage Industry Magazine, according to the Boca Raton News.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, it's Turn On, an aphrodisiac soft drink.

Sure, their site says it's not a soft drink, but carbonated non-alcoholic cherry beverage equals soft drink in my book. This one probably takes top honors for suggestive packaging and could probably give the Bawls bottle a run for it's money.

As you might expect, it has a laundry list of dubious supplements like taurine, guarana, schizandra, ginseng and 80 mg of caffeine per can.

A few of the ingredients have resulted in Turn On being banned in France and Denmark, according to a recent news story.

An interesting little quote from the Turn On FAQ:

"Q: What happens when I mix TURN ON with alcohol?
A: You will most likely get an incredible high, better than anything that you ever purchased or created."