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What Coke Contains

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Re: What Coke Contains

#101

Post by chiaro »

6cxs2hd6 wrote: post #26
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…

> Coke is just addictive sugar water It would be somewhat healthier if it actually contained sugar (as opposed to high fructose corn syrup).

I doubt that. Sugar and HFCS are essentially the same thing, produced in different ways. Sugar (sucrose) is a 50/50 split between glucose and fructose. HFCS has more fructose in it, generally around 65/35.

There's a danger from using too much HFCS in the replacement, but really, saying sugar is healthier than HFCS is akin to saying that it's better to be punched kickboxer than a boxer.

Re: What Coke Contains

#102

Post by jacques_chester »

LaGrange wrote: post #98
jacques_chester wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I'll bite: which are the silly neoliberal ideas?

"Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand." /curtains

Are you saying that people don't act according to their own satisfaction (monetary, emotional, romantic etc)? That human activity is basically Gaussian noise?

Re: What Coke Contains

#103

Post by vacri »

jacques_chester wrote: post #102
LaGrange wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand." /curtains

Are you saying that people don't act according to their own satisfaction (monetary, emotional, romantic etc)? That human activity is basically Gaussian noise?

That's a strawman - disagreeing with the concept of the Invisible Hand (or perhaps rather, disagreeing with the scale some attribute it) is not the same as saying humans are RNGs.

Re: What Coke Contains

#104

Post by vacri »

nivloc wrote: post #88
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…

It's the same reason natural cryolite isn't used - it's not economically viable. Lots of countries grow all the agricultural products. Aluminum isn't hard, just potentially more expensive. > While I'm nit-picking... Me too, Pinjarra is where the refinery for the largest producing bauxite mine is. And the refinery operates today because of cheap coal in Australia. As is the case with many industrial minerals, it's oft…

Lots of countries grow all the agricultural products

Who grows cinnamon, vanilla, coca, and kola? How many countries grow all four, because I doubt it's "lots". Do they also have some form of sugar and aluminium industries? (or steel/tin industries for different kinds of cans, or glass industry for bottles (with something for caps)?)

Besides, saying "oh, but countries could, they just don't" is having your cake and eating it too - the fact that countries don't because it's massively uneconomical means that yes, it does take multiple countries to produce a can.

It's a bit like saying "it takes a superpower to land men on the moon". Oh, sure, you could say "no it doesn't - throw enough private enterprise together and get someone there", but the point remains, no-one will - it still takes a superpower to land men on the moon.

Re: What Coke Contains

#105

Post by zizee »

a_p wrote: post #100
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?

Loaves of bread were sold unsliced until 1928, when a guy named Otto Rohwedder figured out how to slice bread without crushing it. Rohwedder then wrapped the bread and inserted U-shaped pins on both sides of the loaf to make it look similar to an unsliced loaf. Sliced bread became a hit because you no longer had to worry about cutting pieces of similar thickness when you made a sandwich. That's where the expression "…

I can not remember where read it, but if I recall correctly, sliced bread did not catch on until the patent on the bread slicing machine expired.

Re: What Coke Contains

#106

Post by jacques_chester »

vacri wrote: post #103
jacques_chester wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that people don't act according to their own satisfaction (monetary, emotional, romantic etc)? That human activity is basically Gaussian noise?

That's a strawman - disagreeing with the concept of the Invisible Hand (or perhaps rather, disagreeing with the scale some attribute it) is not the same as saying humans are RNGs.

Yes, it's a leading question.

From the other side of the debate I'd attack the concept of subjective value.

Why do people value this? We don't know. They just do.

How do you know they value it? Because of their actions.

Why do they take those actions? Because of their valuations.

But it's also difficult to argue the counter-case. Outside of corner cases such as depression, psychotic episodes etc, if people aren't acting to diminish discomfort or increase their perceived happiness, then what is motivating them?

Re: What Coke Contains

#107

Post by vacri »

jacques_chester wrote: post #106
vacri wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a strawman - disagreeing with the concept of the Invisible Hand (or perhaps rather, disagreeing with the scale some attribute it) is not the same as saying humans are RNGs.

Yes, it's a leading question. From the other side of the debate I'd attack the concept of subjective value. Why do people value this? We don't know. They just do. How do you know they value it? Because of their actions. Why do they take those actions? Because of their valuations. But it's also difficult to argue the counter-case. Outside of corner cases such as depression, psychotic episodes etc, if people aren't act…

The problem with this argument is it's too simplistic. When you respond with "people will sometimes do things against their best interests out of a sense of duty", the counter is to reduce the human to a stimulus-response box and say "aha! but they must be doing that because it benefits some psychological issue, so it is increasing their happiness"

The issue comes when that extremely mangled definition of happiness isn't then injected into economic discourse - it becomes a matter of dusting off the hands and saying "well, we proved that people do what's required to be happy" and go back to the simpler definition.

In any case, reducing everyone to a stimulus-response box and stating that on balance, it must be beneficial to choose action X for the organism turns the definition of 'happiness' into something worthless and actually pretty banal.

Edit: I usually see this argument in the sense of 'maximising profit', but occasionally as 'happiness' or other beneficial emotion.

Re: What Coke Contains

#108

Post by 6ren »

jacques_chester wrote: post #96
6ren wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing http://www.smh.com.au/news/Western-Australia/Pinjarra/2005/0... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_River_%28Western_Austral... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinjarra,_Western_Australia

It's jarring because there's a much more famous Murray river "over east".

I know, it borders my state. But the article specifies the one in Western Australia. Seems OK; but maybe I'm just getting too accustomed to the unhelpfully concise style of mathematics papers.

It was surprising to me too, but concluding it to be "so obviously false" seems unwarranted, especially online - where it's so easy to check. Dismissing surprises as incorrect narrows the world into one's model of the world. And to me, the unknown is more interesting than the known.

Re: What Coke Contains

#109

Post by gambiting »

triplesec wrote: post #94
gambiting wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at yourself - you belong to the elite of our species. You are educated enough to know how to read and write. You are fortunate enough to have a computer,and be connected to the internet. You are fortunate enough to speak one of the most widely used languages in the world. This all implies that you are at the top of our evolutionary ladder. And yet with all this power in your hands, and with the limited time we h…

and you? You castigate a poster for doing exatly what you are doing yourself. Ironically recursive. It's important that the elites of this world understand what harm they and their tribes are doing, intentionally or not, because awareness comes before action!

Of course I am doing it ironically. That's not the point though.

If you think that someone at Coca-Cola Co. is going to wake up one day and say "you know, we are going stop making soda drinks and lay off thousands of people and cause unemployment for hundreds of thousands because after all,we produce a drink that's no good for anyone", then I think you are(just like OP) being naively idealistic.

Re: What Coke Contains

#110

Post by pstadler »

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.

HFCS is not banned in the EU, but its production is limited to 5% of total sugar production.

"Which foods and beverages contain GFS?

Because of the limited availability in Europe, the products in which GFS is used, are those where the sweetening power and other qualities are needed simultaneously. Examples of this can be found in baked goods, cereal products, confectionery, jams and preserves, yogurts and other dairy products, condiments (e.g. mustard and ketchup), canned and packed goods. The use of GFS in soft drinks has been limited as this application needs a fructose content of 42% or higher to give the desired sweetness and GFS is not available in sufficient quantities to be widely used in soft drinks. In the EU, soft drinks continue to be sweetened mostly with sucrose, when in the US, they are sweetened with HFCS."

http://www.eufic.org/page/en/page/FAQ/faqid/glucose-fructose...

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