Coca-Cola and Heart Health? Precisely why America is the least healthy industrialized country.

Coca-Cola has partnered with The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to sponsor a heart health awareness program.  The main sponsor happens to be Diet Coke which on the surface looks to make sense.  Most people know that regular Coke is loaded with sugar and contributes significantly to heart disease.  The fact that the sponsor is Diet Coke is irrelevant.  This is a marketing stunt by Coke designed to get more press for the entire Coca-Cola brand.  When people leave an event sponsored by Coca-Cola they hope you leave, go to the store and remember the name Coca-Cola.  There won’t be a Coca-Cola representative with you to make sure you buy the “heart healthy” Diet Coke.  And Diet Coke is hardly healthy by the way.  It is loaded with an artificial sweetener called aspartame which has serious health consequences by itself.  Read below for information about aspartame.

Aspartame is the technical name for the brand names NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure. It was discovered by accident in 1965 when James Schlatter, a chemist of G.D. Searle Company, was testing an anti-ulcer drug.

Aspartame was approved for dry goods in 1981 and for carbonated beverages in 1983. It was originally approved for dry goods on July 26, 1974, but objections filed by neuroscience researcher Dr John W. Olney and Consumer attorney James Turner in August 1974 as well as investigations of G.D. Searle’s research practices caused the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to put approval of aspartame on hold (December 5, 1974). In 1985, Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle and made Searle Pharmaceuticals and The NutraSweet Company separate subsidiaries.

Aspartame accounts for over 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA. Many of these reactions are very serious including seizures and death. A few of the 90 different documented symptoms listed in the report as being caused by aspartame include: Headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain. (From http://www.mercola.com/articles/aspartame)

I have highlighted several side effects which are clearly not heart healthy

that are associated with aspartame, the main sweetener in Diet Coke.

Coca-Cola is a major reason there is an obesity epidemic in this country.  They have partnered with this health initiative to position themselves as health conscious and that hopefully the public will view soda, not just Diet Coke, as “not that bad.”  This is, of course, designed to sell more soda which will continue to contribute to the poor health of America.  Think about this; there are 39 grams of sugar in one 12 oz. Coke.  That’s equal to 8 teaspoons of sugar! And this brand is promoting heart health?  It makes absolutely no sense.

If Coca-Cola were truly concerned about health, they wouldn’t make their product.  Now I am not so naive that I believe Coca-Cola will just stop making soda.  My fundamental problem is that they align themselves with health initiatives in the hopes that people will view their products more favorably.  Many people can see through the smoke screen, but there are people who don’t.  These are the people that Coke is trying to reach in the hopes that it will create bigger sales.  However, the bigger sales are at the expense of their health.