The NYTimes recently posted an article about the imminent announcement of Coke and Pepsi’s new vitamin-infused sodas, and asked for reader comments about whether the concept of “healthy soda” is at all legitimate. Here’s what I wrote.
I’m no nutritionist, but it seems to me that the potential for soda to be considered healthy is limited more than anything else by the prolific use of artificial sweeteners. I suspect if soda makers committed to sweetening their products only with real cane sugar, then a “healthy line” fortified with vitamins and what have you might not sound utterly ludicrous. But it is a proven fact that regular consumption of high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, or sucralose—especially in the giga-doses Americans seem to prefer—leads to all manner of health problems; diabetes, obesity, and allegedly various cancers and assorted endocrine/lymphatic maladies leap to mind. And just you try finding a major soda brand not sweetened by one of these three toxins.
So I suppose if manufacturers want to take any real strides toward endowing soda with health benefits (as impure as their motives may be), they first ought to start by mitigating soda’s existing health threats. The only realistic means to this end is an FDA ban on the sale of these sweeteners. The soda companies will not switch back to sugar of their own volition for as long as the price of sugar remains artificially high in the U.S. relative to its synthetic alternatives (remember that ours is the only nation in the world with widespread reliance on high fructose corn syrup, and see if you can guess why. It’s purely a matter of economics). As long as they stick to their current ingredients, I’d strongly doubt that any infusion of vitamins, done purely as a gesture of appeasement, would do much to offset the product’s real danger.