Various cans of cola. Photo: Photoshot/Hutton Archive
A piece for the Guardian on the continuing dominance of the world’s most valuable brand
A health campaign group today calls for the UK to follow California and ban a specific colouring from soft drinks including Coca-Cola and Pepsi. A byproduct of the process used to make some caramel colourings is a chemical called 4-MI, and although British and European food safety watchdogs have decided its presence in colas is not a health concern, the substance has been found to cause cancer in rats and mice.
Coke is utter junk, of course, but it can be terribly refreshing. I probably drink a Diet Coke every other week. My “brand loyalty” is literally unquestioned – it never occurs to me to buy any other cola, not that there ever seems much of an opportunity to do so. Pepsi has a 9.5% share in the UK soft drinks market, far less than the 17% for Coke and even the 9.9% for Diet Coke. Diet Pepsi lags with a pitiful 5.3%.
On the few occasions I have bought another cola (even that word looks alien and amputated), I’ve never been impressed. Fentiman’s Curiosity Cola tastes flat and monotone, with a lingering undercurrent that reminds me of diesel. One ethically minded food and drinks company is launching a new cola in time for the Olympics. But a lifetime of conditioning and marketing can often make these products taste less like “the real thing” even though they may derive more of their flavour fromgenuine kola nuts.
It’s a brave company that seeks to rival Coca-Cola. The drink has a presence in over 200 countries: “more than the UN itself”, as one of its executives boasts. It’s been the most valuable brand in the world for years. This is all a long way from its origins in the 1880s, when amorphine-addicted veteran of the American civil war concocted a cocaine and caffeine tonic which he claimed cured headaches, impotence and, handily, morphine addiction. After a certain amount of internal wrangling, a man named Asa Candler wound up with the rights to sell the drink, and made a vast fortune from it. He marketed Coca-Cola with a ferocity never seen before, and his commercial heirs have always followed his lead.
This did not really surprise me. Thankfully, I am not fond of Coca-cola or any other type of sodas at all. Although, rarely I do take a sip or two when there’s absolutely no other type of beverage around.
You might find Old Parn’s post on wine talk interesting…it’s our new site eVines
http://www.evines.co.uk/feature-articles/how-talk-about-wine
I personally have a real mission against soft ‘fizzy’ drinks and believe them to be one of the main culprits in the atrocious health and obesity that has swept the US and now the UK. I am incredulous that so many people consume these drinks on a daily basis and they have no idea how much sugar, additives and chemicals they are pouring into their bodies.
I have to admit I am in the absolute minority being a food purist and will only eat fresh, natural and mainly organic produce. But this has been through hard suffering choice after becoming ‘enlightened’ to the horror of the food quality we have today.
Sometimes I do think how refreshing a Coke would be but am never tempted to try it and articles like this just underline my believe that fizzy drinks are evil : )
Sorry for the rant, I’m just fed up of large corporations keeping the truth obscured.