English: Why it’s time to break up with Diet Coke

Column photo

By Sonya English

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

In my psychology class, the professor asked us to make believe for a moment. We didn’t get to become sorcerers and sumo-wrestlers like we imagined when we were kids, but instead he asked us to imagine that we had been cheated on. Just one more unwelcome reminder that life was simpler then, I guess.

He only cheated once. It was all he needed to decide that he would never cheat again.

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Photo by Mariam Saifan

Now, the professor said, raise your hand if you prefer to never find out about the cheating.

Think about it.

If you would have raised your hand, I advise you to stop reading.

I’m not about to expose your snookums, but it may be something you love just as much (or more): Diet Coke.

Back in the days when make-believe involved magic powers, I took nutrition labels at face value. I thought they listed ingredients in case people wanted to make it themselves. I also concluded that because Diet Coke contained 0 percent of my daily value of everything except sodium, drinking it must be the same as drinking salt water.

But a glance down at the recipe — I mean, list of ingredients — would have rejected my theory. It reads: carbonated water, caramel color, aspartame, phosphoric acid, potassium benzoate (to protect taste), natural flavors, citric acid and caffeine, ordered from most prevalent to least.

Aspartame, also called Nutrasweet, is as controversial as Sarah Palin (and as artificially sweet!). Industry-funded studies find aspartame to be safe, but the majority of independent studies link it to side effects of severe depression, fatigue, anxiety and weight gain. Weight gain would be an ironic side effect of Diet Coke, but I’m more worried that I’m drinking a chemical cocktail.

Notice above that it uses more of the “taste protecting” chemical than the natural flavors that make up that taste.

It hurts not just my body, but Mother Earth as well. In America, we throw away enough aluminum in three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet. Of course all those cans of Diet Coke take energy to produce, but it’s only part of the energy wasteland that is the soft-drink industry. The manufacturing process uses massive amounts of water.

Coca-Cola’s water inefficiency is an issue the company addressed at the end of October when it announced a partnership with the World Wildlife Fund to adopt more sustainable business practices.

It takes about 2.5 liters of water to produce each liter of Coke in the bottling plant alone.

To its credit, Coca-Cola is not a stranger to green initiatives. In January, it announced that it would replace 100,000 of its vending machines with compressed carbon dioxide beverage coolers, which are 1,000 times more energy efficient than standard systems.

These are steps in the right direction, but the size of the company almost ensures a mammoth carbon footprint. According to Fortune magazine, Coca-Cola expects its water use to increase in the next few years because of growth in sales. And as for the vending machines, 100,000 down, 9.9 million to go.

Cue Debbie-Downer music: Diet Coke comes at a cost far higher than what you pay at the register. I can understand both sides of the cheating-spouse dilemma, but Diet Coke never deserved my trust in the first place.

— — English is an Overland Park junior in journalism and economics.

Comments

stephenfox (anonymous) says...

It is really great that this article by Sonya English starts to mention the proven medical evidence of effects of consuming Aspartame, which derive from the fact that it is metabolized as methanol, or wood alcohol, which is so toxic the liver does its best to convert it into something a little less toxic, in this case: FORMALDEHYDE.

Aspartame is also metabolized as DIKETOPIPERAZINE, a proven brain tumor causing agent. I encourage Sonya English, this excellent journalist-in-the-making, to talk with the Medical School toxicologists and oncologists to confirm what I am saying. I am another kind of expert on aspartame, having written a bill to ban it and a Resolution asking FDA to rescind its approval, for the Hawaii Legislature, where you can read it at the Hawaii Legislature website as Senate Concurrent Resolution 191 from 2008, and for the New Mexico Legislature, where I live. Both were shot down by mendacious corporate lobbyists.

To read more, just google to found how it got forced through the FDA and onto the market by Donald Rumsfeld in 1981 when he was CEO of G.D. Searle, the patent holder at the time, for a (speculated) profit and bonus of $12-15 million. Presently, Aspartame's largest manufacturer is AJINOMOTO of Japan, France, and Augusta Georgia. The Georgia plant ships this poison in Hazardous Materials Trucks manned by guys in Space Suits to Coca Cola, to be added to the phosphoric
acid/sugar/water/coloring mix sold as DIET COKE.

Are you by now disgusted? Horrified? Good! You are just getting started to learn the truth about this neurotoxic carcinogen, also found in sugarless gum and almost all Wrigley's products.

In the late 1990's, I wrote once to all of the state Attorneys General in the USA about this stuff, asking them to consider punitive and compensatory
suits similar to the Tobacco suits in the early 1990's, and Phill Kline was one of the few to respond. However, none has yet to do a single thing to protect American Consumers, and that is why I am hoping Dr. Howard Dean will accept either Health Secretary or FDA Commissioner, which should be a Cabinet Position anyway. Sonya, keep up the good work: you are just getting started on Aspartame, if you want to get the truth out to Kansans, especially to all of the diabetics who are the first to use aspartame, and should be the last, with their less than functioning pancreas.

Respectfully,
Stephen Fox, Contributing Editor New Mexico Sun News
505 983-2002
217 W. Water
Santa Fe, NM 87501

November 13, 2008 at 4:02 p.m. ( | suggest removal )

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