The Anatomy of a Coke

Consider the average Coca Cola classic drink. You've grown up with it, your parents grew up with it. Maybe even your grandparents grew up with it. It used to come in that stylish glass bottle, the kind that are hard to find nowadays.

But what makes a Coca Cola tick? As for ingredients: carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors, and caffeine. Diet Coke also has aspartame, potassium benzoate, and citric acid, along with the aforementioned other ingredients.

If you're very health conscious or know your chemicals (Yes, chemicals.), some of those ingredients very likely caught your eye.

Carbonated water is just your basic water infused with carbon dioxide gas. At worst, it'll give you the farts. Nothing too vicious. It makes up the majority of the drink, and is what gives it that fizz.

High fructose corn syrup (sometimes called HFCS for short, usually by those like myself who are too afraid to evoke its full name.) is one of those ingredients that makes health specialists cringe. It's much sweeter than sugar. It's essentially corn syrup--except that it has been treated with engineered enzymes to convert some of the glucose into fructose. This makes it quite a bit sweeter than regular corn syrup. It's often toted as being all natural, but that's only by some sick stretch of the imagination.

High fructose corn syrup has some very interesting qualities: For one, fructose does not trigger the same type of insulin response that other sugars do. High fructose corn syrup prevents leptin from reaching the brain. Leptin is the trigger that tells the brain to tell you to stop eating. Notice how 20 or 30 years ago (if you're that old.) it was a lot harder to chug down a liter of coke? Compare to now. That's because before they started using high fructose corn syrup rampantly, our brains got the signal that we were ingesting way too much sugar, and we needed to stop. Thus, headache, stomachache, and more. Now, it's easy, or at least, easier--the high fructose corn syrup enables us to essentially drink until we puke.

And this is aided and abetted by one of my other favorite chemicals, phosphoric acid.

Phosphoric acid is the reason people say that cokes will rot your teeth. They weren't kidding. Phosphoric acid is a dangerous acid, and in my opinion, it should have no place in human food. Or any food, period. Phosphoric acid cuts the unbearable sweetness that you would experience due to the large amounts of high fructose corn syrup. Without phosphoric acid, as soon as a coke hit your tongue, you'd start gagging uncontrollably. Phosphoric acid has a ton of nasty qualities: it's an acid. It can mess with the pH of your blood, for one.

Phosphoric acid could and should have a whole other article dedicated solely to it.

Aspartame, found only in the Diet Coke version of the coke, is an artificial sweetener. It adds no carbohydrate to the brew, and so it can be toted as a calorie-free, sugar-free sweetener. However, aspartame has been linked to neurological and nervous system problems, headaches, learning disabilities, and other assorted ailments.

Caffeine, of course, is ever-present except in Caffeine-Free deviants of the drinks. There are 34 milligrams per 12 ounce serving of Coca Cola Classic. Interestingly, there are 45.6 milligrams per 12 ounce serving of Diet Coke.

With any luck, you will take a harsher eye, now, to any soft drinks you purchase in the future, or not purchase them at all.