Nice Try Coke #fail

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June 25, 2014 by little hurdles big race

You may have seen reports this week that due to declining soda and diet soda sales (hooray!) Coca-Cola has now come up with Coke Life.  Market testing has begun in some South American countries and is soon to hit the United Kingdom.  Coke Life boasts a green can – which represents that Coke Life is sweetened with Stevia.

Stevia is a plant that has been around for over 1000 years until recently was primarily used by diabetics as a sweetener.  Stevia has recently gained a lot of attention due to its “negligible effect on blood glucose it is attractive to people on carbohydrate-controlled diets”.

Sounds great, right?

Wrong!

While I am thrilled that Coke is scrambling to make up lost market share because consumers are actually doing their research and making better choices, I question Coke’s continued marketing of an unhealthy product as a healthy one.  We all know the dangers of diet and regular soda by now…

While Coke Life sounds like a great alternative.  It will definitely better tasting and less cancer causing that soda filled with aspartame.  Here’s the problem – there are still high amounts of sugar in that green can.  4 teaspoons to be exact.  While that may not sound like much, especially since a regular can of Coke has 10 teaspoons, it is 2/3 of the way to your daily allowance of sugar.  The World Health Organization has just lowered the recommended daily allowance of sugar to 6 teaspoons.  6! …and you’re wasting it on a can of soda!  The 6 teaspoons does include all forms of sugar FYI.

I’m also pretty sure that Coke isn’t deviating from greasing the palm of the corn industry – so that sugar is going to appear in the form of high fructose corn syrup which we all know has come under fire for being too highly processed and adding to our country’s weight gain by destroying normal appetite function.  I’m also pretty sure Coke is going to continue to be caramel colored with the help of carcinogens.

I’m not even going to bring up phosphoric acid, dyes, or formaldehyde because that’s not even the real issue here.  Why is a beverage sweetened with stevia, that is used as an exclusive sweetener in thousands of other products, need even more sugar added?

Get a better recipe.

#fail