Did Coca-Cola Trash The Grand Canyon’s Plastic Bottle Ban?
It’s good to see the mainstream media calling foul on some corporate dirty work. Karin Kline writes in the LA Times:
Grand Canyon National Park was just about to impose a ban on single-use plastic water bottles — the most common form of trash found along its trails — when the plan was suddenly put on hold, the New York Times reported. The paper raises the possibility that Coca-Cola Co. was able to get a sympathetic ear at the National Parks Foundation because the company, which bottles Dasani water, is a major donor.
This isn’t a radical new idea. Zion National Park already has a ban. The park provides “hydration stations” for people to refill their reusable bottles, as the Grand Canyon park would have.
The story included a strange comment from a Coca-Cola spokeswoman, who said that bans on single-use plastic bottles are never the answer, and that recycling would resolve the…
Osama Was Crazy About American Soft Drinks, Apparently
A nugget from a Bloomberg article — Abbottabad shopkeepers say that the men revealed to be bin Laden’s aides would regularly purchase bulk quantities of both Pepsi and Coke. It seems his hatred for the infidels was matched only by his love for our sweet, sweet carbonated colas.
The two polite Pakistanis who helped Osama bin Laden hide in the shadow of their country’s army bought bulk food orders, chose major brands and equally favored Pepsi and Coke, neighbors and a local shopkeeper said.
The men called themselves Akbar and Rashid Khan and they owned the fortified home where U.S. commandos killed bin Laden in an early morning raid May 2. They did the daily shopping in the Pashtu-language accents of Waziristan, a region on the Afghan border, said grocer Anjum Qaisar, 27, who works 150 meters from the compound.
“I was curious about why they bought so much food, but I did not…
Caramel Coloring In Coke Causes Cancer
Photo Credit: Jorge Bach, CSPI
A few days ago it was revealed that diet soda can trigger strokes in regular drinkers of the sweet fizzy beverages. Now the Center for Science in the Public Interest is petitioning the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to prohibit what it says is carcinogenic “caramel coloring” (that is, not real caramel but synthetic, chemical “caramel”):
The “caramel coloring” used in Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other foods is contaminated with two cancer-causing chemicals and should be banned, according to a regulatory petition filed today by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
In contrast to the caramel one might make at home by melting sugar in a saucepan, the artificial brown coloring in colas and some other products is made by reacting sugars with ammonia and sulfites under high pressure and temperatures. Chemical reactions result in the formation of 2-methylimidazole and 4 methylimidazole, which in government-conducted studies caused lung, liver,…
Coca-Cola’s Secret Recipe Finally Revealed
Well, no surprise there’s no cocaine in it (it hasn’t had that “health elixir” for quite some time) but interesting to note there’s one ingredient only Coca-Cola can get — fluid extract of coca (the leaves stripped of cocaine) — due to a deal with the DEA. Casey Chan writes on Gizmodo:
The secret recipe of Coke has been hidden and locked down for 125 years. But apparently, not anymore. This American Life says they’ve found the ingredients that make up the delicious bubbly cola and have revealed it to our delight.
The story starts with John Pemberton, a Civil War veteran who’s credited with inventing Coca-Cola. His original recipe was written down in a recipe book of various ointments and medicines that was passed down from generation to generation.
A photograph of that recipe, from that very recipe book, was taken in the Feb. 18, 1979, edition of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution and only…
Coca-Cola: “No Consumer Could Reasonably Be Misled into Thinking Vitaminwater Was a Healthy Beverage”
Photo: Lpinaye (CC)
Courtroom insanity when a company that makes a product can say in its defense that why would a consumer consider it to be safe … John Robbins writes on the Huffington Post:
Now here’s something you wouldn’t expect. Coca-Cola is being sued by a non-profit public interest group, on the grounds that the company’s vitaminwater products make unwarranted health claims. No surprise there. But how do you think the company is defending itself?
In a staggering feat of twisted logic, lawyers for Coca-Cola are defending the lawsuit by asserting that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.”
Does this mean that you’d have to be an unreasonable person to think that a product named “vitaminwater,” a product that has been heavily and aggressively marketed as a healthy beverage, actually had health benefits?
Or does it mean that it’s okay for a corporation to lie about its…
Coca-Cola Intimidates Student Group Over Film Screening
Maybe I’ll have a Pepsi instead. Via Art Threat:
What can make a giant tremble? When a penniless student group gets a threat from New York lawyers — in this case, Coca-Cola’s lawyers — on account the students want to show a film condemning human rights abuses, the optics suggest that the giant has something to hide. ‘Screening truth to power’, it seems, has its consequences.
Earlier this month, Coke threatened legal action to prevent the screening of a new documentary film The Coca-Cola Case. The $141 billion company (with annual revenues of $28 billion) threatened a small non-profit media-arts group called Cinema Politica which shows documentary films for free at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and through a network of independent locals across Canada, in the United States, and in Europe and Latin America.
