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What Coke Contains

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Re: What Coke Contains

#71

Post by glhaynes »

yareally wrote: post #51
DigitalSea wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that's awesome. We live in a society where one person takes credit for something and in this case a Coke can is comprised of many inventions as are many things. You never hear about the guy who helped shape the process of creating the bottom of soda cans or the tab on them. I wonder who invented that piece of plastic that holds store bought bread together?

Not the individual inventor, but this company[1] invented the twisty in 1939. Also twistys are color coated on bread, denoting the day of the week it was put out[2]. [1] http://www.twistems.com/pages/profile.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twist_tie#Color_coding_for_brea...

I love that Wednesday's twist tie color is a complete mystery even with the assembled resources of the internet.

Re: What Coke Contains

#72

Post by mozboz »

k33 wrote: post #13

eh, I just don't feel like the writer understands or cares to explain how that whole process is actually detrimental to the world despite the fact that it "unites" it. Coke is just addictive sugar water that does nothing for anyone. When has coke given you something other than diabetes? Kevin Ashton fails at pointing out the impact of this collaboration. Couldn't all of these talented people that made such a sophisti…

You're absolutely right, and it's important to keep raising this point and engaging with the part of your awareness that recognises that there is nothing good about coke and many other products and businesses.

Businesses and the people that work for them need to engage with their consciences, and stop doing work that causes harm, such as producing or marketing a food product with catastrophic effects to human health.

In response to some other comments: 'because I need to earn money' is not a reason to do work that causes harm to other people, 'because i am well off' is not a reason to not challenge what you perceive as harmful.

Re: What Coke Contains

#73

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

venus wrote: post #63

> The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero While I understand what the author is trying to say, I don't think that is true at all. I'm pretty sure that if they had a good reason, any number of advanced economies could get it together enough to produce the cans themselves. Seems like the main hard part is the aluminium. While I'm nit-picking, I believe natural cryolite has not been use…

>I'm pretty sure that if they had a good reason, any number of advanced economies could get it together enough to produce the cans themselves.

It's not just the metal, it's the ingredients of the flavouring. Coca leaves don't grow everywhere (although, sure, you could put the plant in a greenhouse).

Re: What Coke Contains

#74

Post by mynameishere »

contingencies wrote: post #67
mynameishere wrote: post #40

By contrast, you can make wine from a single ingredient. And it's an awful lot better than coke.

A good spot to learn precisely how and why you are wrong: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/

Natural grapes make wine on their own. In fact, most creatures produce ethanol through one or another pathway.

Re: What Coke Contains

#75

Post by maxerickson »

yareally wrote: post #56
mbaird wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK it still uses sugar, and imho tastes a whole lot better than the HFCS version.

Most countries still do, except the US, where we have corn subsidies and sugar tariffs to artificially lower the price of corn and artificially raise the price of sugar (to protect a few growers in the south US). The other year when sugar prices were near equal to corn, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper distributed soda with sugar only throughout much of the United States. I haven't followed the prices of sugar since, but I would…

The commodity price of sugar is ~1.5 cents per can of soda, so I think they could get away with it whenever they wanted (meaning that they would have canceled the products because they weren't making enough volume on them).

Now I looked it up, Pepsi markets "throwback" brands which use sugar.

Re: What Coke Contains

#76

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

chimpinee wrote: post #57

An enormous and sophisticated 'tool chain'. Surely it could never be implemented in a one-day-to-be-invented universal fabricator? One is reminded of those 19th C ppl who thought recorded music was impossible since any player would have to contain miniature versions of all the orchestral instruments (or things that resembled them: "humanity's choir") together with a horrendously large paper roll punched full of holes

If you have a large enough supply of electrons, protons and neutrons, and you can combine them at will, you can make anything.

Re: What Coke Contains

#78

Post by yareally »

glhaynes wrote: post #71
yareally wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the individual inventor, but this company[1] invented the twisty in 1939. Also twistys are color coated on bread, denoting the day of the week it was put out[2]. [1] http://www.twistems.com/pages/profile.html [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twist_tie#Color_coding_for_brea...

I love that Wednesday's twist tie color is a complete mystery even with the assembled resources of the internet.

I had a good laugh at that as well. I'm wondering now if it was intentional or the person that added it to wiki really did not know.

Re: What Coke Contains

#79

Post by [deleted] »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #73
venus wrote: post #63

> The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero While I understand what the author is trying to say, I don't think that is true at all. I'm pretty sure that if they had a good reason, any number of advanced economies could get it together enough to produce the cans themselves. Seems like the main hard part is the aluminium. While I'm nit-picking, I believe natural cryolite has not been use…

>I'm pretty sure that if they had a good reason, any number of advanced economies could get it together enough to produce the cans themselves. It's not just the metal, it's the ingredients of the flavouring. Coca leaves don't grow everywhere (although, sure, you could put the plant in a greenhouse).

[deleted]

Re: What Coke Contains

#80

Post by nsp »

robotmay wrote: post #49
jechen wrote: post #23

Curious as to why there's no mention of the secret formula, since the author is wrong about kola nut being an ingredient of the syrup: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/pr2001447 (from the Coca-Cola wiki page), which interestingly is a component in many purported recipes. It's also interesting to see a picture of a glass bottle coke when the American product rarely exists in such form. I've sworn off the HFCS versi…

AFAIK the use of high-fructose corn syrup is illegal in the EU and a number of other regions (thankfully), hence why Coke is made with actual sugar in most areas outside the US.

Corn syrup is also cheaper than sugar in the United States due to large tariffs on imported sugars and large subsidies for domestic corn production. I'm pretty sure this is the original reason for use only in the USA as opposed to laws forbidding it outside.
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