Coke is crap

Now, I'm not too sure how I've been able to do it but for years I've drank hundreds of liters of Coca Cola, literally. That's not the part that surprises me, I love the taste of it, what surprises me is that I actually managed to avoid putting on dozens of pounds (or any really) in that time. But I was lucky, because I had a near addiction to Coca Cola. Actually it was pretty close to being an addiction; if I didn't have a coke before about 2:00 pm I would start to get a headache, likely just caffeine withdrawal, but it still sucked.

A few times before now I'd managed to shake the black monkey from my back, but he always came back. My failure was usually because I just started to neglect that I was trying kick the habit, and once I had a taste for that sweet nectar again I was done for. That being said, somehow I managed to kick the habit yet again. I'm pretty pleased with myself for it since I wasn't really trying to. It came out of a byproduct of trying to eat more healthier meals, mainly more fruit and vegetables. I'm hoping that I can stay off it this time, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I have noticed lately that there's been a new product on the shelves in stores lately: Diet Coke Plus. It turns out that they have added vitamin and minerals to Diet Coke to make it "healthy". You can read a press release here if you want (I didn't, I just used it for the technical information). Now I haven't tested Diet Coke Plus myself, but I'm pretty sure that they are just selling snake oil. Ok, maybe there are a few vitamins in there, but as for their claims of there being any zinc or magnesium, well I call BULLSHIT!

See zinc and magnesium are both metals; acids, like the carbonic and phosphoric acids in coke, will combine with the metal ions to form complexes in solution, some are soluble, many are not. Well the complexes that zinc and magnesium form with carbonate or phosphate are nowhere near the DV of the metals. The reality is that Coke probably never put the minerals in the product, or they were filtered out as a solid before bottling; of their should be particulate matter floating around in your coke.

In fact I did some rough calculations, and if you were to get 10% of your DV for magnesium you would need to drink 11,860 liters of Diet Coke Plus! I'm pretty sure you can get more magnesium in your diet by sucking on a quarter than drinking Diet Coke Plus, talk about fraud!