COKE WITH VITAMINS ~ THE NEW HEALTHY

Have a coke. Get healthy! Coca-Cola has responded to consumer demand and is now producing "healthy" beverages.

"Diet and light brands are actually health and wellness brands," Coke's CEO E. Neville Isdell told The New York Times.

He was referring to a new product called Diet Coke Plus, which is Diet Coke plus a few vitamins.

Where do I start?

Diet Coke consists of artificially blackened water tinged with synthetic chemicals. Here are its ingredients, from most prevalent to least: carbonated water, caramel color, aspartame, phosphoric acid, potassium benzoate (to protect taste), natural flavors, citric acid; and caffeine [emphasis added].

To protect taste? What are people supposed to be tasting? Oh right, there it is: "natural flavors." Note that the swill contains more of the chemical designed to protect said flavors than the flavors themselves. Like mob bosses and presidents, I guess they need a lot of protection.

Seriously, though: Diet Coke is a nutritional void. Human bodies evolved to make use of a variety of foods, but I doubt isolated versions of phosphoric acid, etc., are among them. And aspartame, aka Nutrasweet, may cause active damage.

Can this questionable brew be made "healthy" by adding a few isolated nutrients, quite likely conjured up in the bustling labs of Archer Daniels Midland?

No, I don't think it works that way. Michael Pollan's recent New York Times Magazine piece exposed the absurdity of that notion. It turns out that systematically stripping nutrition out of food, and then adding it later in isolated form, is a bust. Isolated vitamins and other nutrients just don't pack the same benefits as when they occur in whole foods.

Then there's the question of aspartame. Italian researchers writing in Environmental Health Perspectives recently added (PDF) to a growing body of literature pointing to aspartame's possible role as a carcinogen.

Why would the FDA allow it? In 1981, a company called Searle owned the patent on aspartame, already known, paradoxically, as Nutrasweet. The company's CEO? Donald Rumsfeld ~ not too far removed from serving as Gerald Ford's secretary of defense. Don't believe me? Check it out.

Then-president Ronald Reagan had appointed a man named Arthur Hull Hayes as his FDA chair. In 1981, Hayes approved aspartame over the objections of several internal panels.

Rummy, of course, would go on to greater things, but not before engineering the sale of Searle and its suddenly quite valuable Nutrasweet division to Monsanto (which in turn sold Nutrasweet to a private-equity firm).

As for Hayes, he exited the FDA and entered a robust career, which continues today, as a biotech exec and serial corporate board sitter.

The mind reels. I think I'll go eat an apple.

JUST A LITTLE MORE

Countless numbers of dieters consume Diet Coke thinking that it is inert to their diet efforts. After all, it's called Diet Coke, right? Wrong.

Diet Coke, regardless of how many calories it has, wreaks havoc on your fat loss efforts and will ultimately cause you to gain weight. There are two main reasons for the Diet Coke fallacy. First, the sweet taste from Diet Coke elicits an insulin spike, which blocks your ability to burn fat. Second, artificial sweeteners found in Diet Coke disrupt satiety, the feeling of being full. Combined, the actions of Diet Coke go against a healthy lifestyle. Understanding why ensures that we think twice before consuming it.

When it comes to losing fat, it is more about how much sugar (or sugar substitute) you consume rather than calories or dietary fat intake. Hence, the goal is to consume as little sugar or sugar substitute as possible (including fruits and their juices). Why? The sweet flavor elicits the release of insulin from the pancreas to enhance the uptake of sugar by the cells so that it doesn't linger in the bloodstream. Once insulin is released it inhibits your fat burning hormone called hormone sensitive lipase (HSL). This hormone is responsible for releasing fat into the bloodstream to be utilized as fuel. If inhibited, your body is unable to burn fat and will then begin utilizing amino acids from muscle and carbohydrates as fuel. This will leave you feeling tired, grumpy, and sloth-like toward the end of the day. Not to mention, you will become abnormally hungry. Those with large amounts of HSL burn fat all day and look thin and slim. Those who inhibit it by eating or drinking the wrong substances grow fat throughout their adult years.

Second, as discovered by Professor Terry Davidson and associate professor Susan Withers at Purdue University, artificial sweeteners disrupt satiety, the feeling of being full. Their results, published in International Journal of Obesity showed that "mouth feel" plays a crucial role in the body's ability to count calories and that when we consume artificial sweeteners we disrupt the body's ability to count calories based on sweetness. Not able to use mouth feel to count calories, those who drink diet coke will overeat without conscious awareness. In other words, you think you're not eating like a pig, but in reality you are.

Diet Coke is not the only substance having these abilities. Makers of health food bars and protein supplements are either not aware or ignore the ill effects of sugar alternatives and sugar. This can be seen by the fact that most every health food bar and protein supplement is loaded with sugar or artificial sweeteners. The belief that these bars and supplements are healthy for you is a perfect example of how marketing strategies can supersede medical science and common sense.

In closing, Diet Coke is a joke. Stay away from it and other sugar sources if you're serious about losing fat and keeping it off forever. Regardless of your diet and/or training efforts, the aforementioned ill effects of sugar alternatives and sugar will greatly hinder them.