Coca-Cola's Coffee Soda

Boost writes "According to a new press release Coca-Cola is about to launch a new beverage called Coca-Cola Blak that adds real coffee to the blend. Carbonated coffee?" I imagine this will be quite different than the cans of hot coffee that makes walking around in Tokyo so delicious. But hey, cans of coffee! I'm in for one at least.

Comments

How 'bout some real sugar

[LJWhorfin]

all these varieties of Coke -- how about one the puts REAL sugar back in the recipe instead of high fructose corn syrup. Jolt used to be this (real sugar and twice the caffeine -- was their slogan).. now jolt is corn syrup too (as of about 5 years ago around here). Oh -- and stop sellting the 8oz glass bottles for $1 each... i can buy 2 liters for that but i prefer the glass container.

Hear Hear!

[wass]

Definitely. American companies put way too much HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) in their products, and it's nasty stuff. About two years ago I decided to avoid HFCS, but still eat sweets like I normally would. Ie, I still ate ice cream, cookies, sodas, cereal, etc, but only those brands that use cane sugar instead of HFCS. You can get good products at places like Whole Foods (pricy) or Trader Joes (similar price or even cheaper than a supermarket). [In fact, Trader Joes cereals, which don't have HFCS, are cheaper than the corresponding kinds from Kelloggs and General Mills which do have HFCS.] Anyway, the interesting result is that, without meaning to, I lost about 15 pounds while still eating all the desserts I wanted, just by avoiding HFCS!.

One thing is that HFCS seems to do is inhibit the 'full' feeling you get after eating, so you can eat more if your food has HFCS. Great news for food companies, not good news for American health.

It is annoying because food with real sugar just tastes much better, and is healthier. In most other countries products like Coca-Cola has cane sugar, but here in the USA all products substitute HFCS. I once emailed Coca-Cola about this a few years ago, they said it's up to local bottlers to decide which sweetener to use. And of course they cut corners and go for the cheap stuff.

Some companies use this to their advantage because ignorant people see CORN instead of SUGAR and think the product is healthier. Ie, Kelloggs Corn Pops used to be called Sugar Pops. By making the change, parents thought Corn sounded much healthier than sugar, so they have no problem giving this cereal to their kids, when it has the same amount of calories, yet uses HFCS instead of cane or beet sugar.

Unfortunately midwestern corn farmers have alot of political power, and politicians, aiming for approval in the early Iowa primaries, are likely to bow down to these farmers in order to get the party nomination. The corn lobby has huge power, both political and economical, and they choose to market HFCS instead of doing something productive such as growing biofuels with the corn instead.

Another thing is that it's more expensive to import and use cane sugar than to process corn into HFCS. I am not certain of this, but I would theorize that one big factor is due to the embargo we put on Cuba after Castro came to power in 1959. Cuba was a huge source of cane sugar (their chief export), so the embargo basically crippled their economy overnight and impeded a huge source of sugar cane into the USA. So corn farmers, along with massive chemical processing to produce the HFCS, filled the void.

Anyway, that is my rant, I hate HFCS, and it's good to see more people becoming aware of it. I really do think that just by substituting cane sugar for HFCS there will be a notable change in America's obesity problem. It probably won't cure the problem, but I think there would be definite effects.