Coca-Cola's Coffee Soda

Boost writes "According to a new press release Coca-Cola is about to launch a new beverage called Coca-Cola Blak that adds real coffee to the blend. Carbonated coffee?" I imagine this will be quite different than the cans of hot coffee that makes walking around in Tokyo so delicious. But hey, cans of coffee! I'm in for one at least.

Jolt Cola?

[Jotii]

So, this will be their counter to Jolt Cola?

Soulless marketing

[Toby The Economist]

> The lightly carbonated, mid-calorie beverage, which is designed to appeal to
> adult consumers, is yet another example how The Coca-Cola Company reaches out to
> new audiences and addresses new beverage occasions.

Spew, vomit, hurl, etc.

It's true what they say, about marketing people having sold their souls.

How 'bout some real sugar

[LJWhorfin]

all these varieties of Coke -- how about one the puts REAL sugar back in the recipe instead of high fructose corn syrup. Jolt used to be this (real sugar and twice the caffeine -- was their slogan).. now jolt is corn syrup too (as of about 5 years ago around here). Oh -- and stop sellting the 8oz glass bottles for $1 each... i can buy 2 liters for that but i prefer the glass container.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

[nuxx]

It's too bad that the new product will probably contain high fructose corn syrup, lending the typically thick, crappy mouthfeel and taste of all American sodas to the new product.

I really wish big American soda manufacturers would use sugar again. Sugar-based sodas taste so much better.

Re:How 'bout some real sugar

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost nobody has used real sugar since the 70s, $ >= taste apparently... Buy some Dublin Dr. Pepper and you'll realize (like I did being born in 83 after the switch to corn syrup) how much better it is. Corn syrup makes any soda taste like.... SYRUP. http://www.dublindrpepper.com/ [dublindrpepper.com]

Re:Picture of the actual product

[lowmagnet]

Coca Cola Blake? The do realise what a bar above a vowel means, don't they?

Sounds like Coffee NT

[Jepler]

A few years ago, some friends and I tried combining cold coffee with carbonated water from a soft-drink machine.

Because of the taste of the stuff, we christened it "Coffee NT", which stood for "Not Tasty".

Perhaps we were missing the secret ingredient, though. Corn syrup. Lots of corn syrup.

Re:Soulless marketing... via /.

[rbochan]

You think the marketers are bad?
At least they (I mean really, "boost"... just a coincidence eh?) were able to get an "article" posted to slashdot containing a solitary link to the corporate press release along with a one lin blurb about the "new" product. I hope taco got at least a new car out of the deal.

Hear Hear!

[wass]

Definitely. American companies put way too much HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) in their products, and it's nasty stuff. About two years ago I decided to avoid HFCS, but still eat sweets like I normally would. Ie, I still ate ice cream, cookies, sodas, cereal, etc, but only those brands that use cane sugar instead of HFCS. You can get good products at places like Whole Foods (pricy) or Trader Joes (similar price or even cheaper than a supermarket). [In fact, Trader Joes cereals, which don't have HFCS, are cheaper than the corresponding kinds from Kelloggs and General Mills which do have HFCS.] Anyway, the interesting result is that, without meaning to, I lost about 15 pounds while still eating all the desserts I wanted, just by avoiding HFCS!.

One thing is that HFCS seems to do is inhibit the 'full' feeling you get after eating, so you can eat more if your food has HFCS. Great news for food companies, not good news for American health.

It is annoying because food with real sugar just tastes much better, and is healthier. In most other countries products like Coca-Cola has cane sugar, but here in the USA all products substitute HFCS. I once emailed Coca-Cola about this a few years ago, they said it's up to local bottlers to decide which sweetener to use. And of course they cut corners and go for the cheap stuff.

Some companies use this to their advantage because ignorant people see CORN instead of SUGAR and think the product is healthier. Ie, Kelloggs Corn Pops used to be called Sugar Pops. By making the change, parents thought Corn sounded much healthier than sugar, so they have no problem giving this cereal to their kids, when it has the same amount of calories, yet uses HFCS instead of cane or beet sugar.

Unfortunately midwestern corn farmers have alot of political power, and politicians, aiming for approval in the early Iowa primaries, are likely to bow down to these farmers in order to get the party nomination. The corn lobby has huge power, both political and economical, and they choose to market HFCS instead of doing something productive such as growing biofuels with the corn instead.

Another thing is that it's more expensive to import and use cane sugar than to process corn into HFCS. I am not certain of this, but I would theorize that one big factor is due to the embargo we put on Cuba after Castro came to power in 1959. Cuba was a huge source of cane sugar (their chief export), so the embargo basically crippled their economy overnight and impeded a huge source of sugar cane into the USA. So corn farmers, along with massive chemical processing to produce the HFCS, filled the void.

Anyway, that is my rant, I hate HFCS, and it's good to see more people becoming aware of it. I really do think that just by substituting cane sugar for HFCS there will be a notable change in America's obesity problem. It probably won't cure the problem, but I think there would be definite effects.

Coded Message Perhaps?

[Nehmo]

By the foot icon, I understand the parent post to be in the "funny" category, but where's the humor? And if it isn't funny, how is the article relevant to /.? I'm working on decoding the hidden message. There must be some reason our mod's, in their wisdom, included an article about Coca-Cola mixing some coffee with Coke.

Re:Ä, not A

[ggy]

Uhm, you mean "Blä" right? "Bläk" just feels like someone is misspelling "Black" or "Bläck" (=ink). Or is my Stockholmian brain just missing words used in the rest of the country?

Re:But what about the flavour?

[SPY_jmr1]

Gah, I knew someone would hit that point. Kudos.

Myself, I am not a programer, and I didn't want to spout off on something that I wasn't qualified to comment on.

That said, thanks for the extra info!

Good thing we don't have to spell things in octal using chemical suffuxes, or i'd never get those people to learn anything, hah!

SPY

Re:But what about the flavour?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fact-checking is important, and it's only going to get harder the more the internet fills up with so much satire and fabricated crap. Sadly I was suspicious about the source merely because it didn't look professional -- the funny thing is professional-looking sites don't necessarily have more accurate info. In this case the hunch is correct, but who's checking major new sites' facts? In so many cases it seems like... nobody (I vaguely recall having seen some instances of incorrect news stories on cnn, bbc, reuters, all over the place).

Been here, done that

[chrysrobyn]

In college, I ended up doing a little drink mixing (non-alcoholic drinks only to my current chagrin). Let me save you some trouble.

Coffee + soda (Coke or Mountain Dew). Terrible idea. Kill it now.

Juice + soda (Coke or Mountain Dew). With small amounts of juice, can be very good. I actually repeated grape Kool-Aid + Mountain Dew several times (different from Pitch Black, but that gets you started). Stay away from limes and lemons. Maraschino cherry juice in Mountain Dew predicted Code Red accurately.

Chocolate syrup + black coffee. There's a reason they usually put loads of cream in coffe when adding chocolate.

Chocolate syrup + soda. Terrible idea. The syrup doesn't mix well, and when it does, the flavors in your mouth are horrid.

In short, there's a reason sodas have been made with fruit juices (imitation and real) for 100 years, and not coffee or other substances.

Also, Oreos (at least the generic equivalent where you get 4x the cookies for half the price) go very well with Mountain Dew, possibly better than the historical milk.

Coca-Cola kills its workers

[br00tus]

Coca-Cola has been killing its workers in Colombia. They even had one killed right inside the plant while he was working. Apparently they don't like that the workers are trying to organize a union. There is a global boycott of Coca-Cola products going on right now, which I participate in, I haven't had any Coca-Cola products for several years. The web site for the boycot is Killer Coke [killercoke.org].

I doubt that most of the white, western professionals who read Slashdot will care much about this, some probably will like Coke more than ever considering the kind of talk so many listen to on talk radio and Fox News, but a few will, and I am posting this to inform those few. Working class people tend to be more sympathetic to these things.

Re:Coca-Cola kills its workers

[That's Unpossible!]

Ha funny. a "Coke" plant in Columbia. Maybe someone got confused and started killing people at the wrong kind of "coke plant."

Maybe "working class" people are more sympathetic because they are more ignorant and willing to believe this B.S. without any proof? Working class people also go to church more than white collar folks. Also an area where proof is not needed.

Please, show me some documented PROOF of these events happening, that they were carried out by Coca-Cola employees for company reasons, etc. Anything. I read through the website you listed and saw nothing but propaganda.

Your cause will usually be greeted more receptively if it isn't promoted singularly by anti-capitalist, left-wing whackos.