So, is this urban legend or not…I’ve heard that Diet Coke isn’t the low calorie splendor that we’re lead to believe. In fact, the rumor is that they pay the FDA for labeling violations/misrepresentation.
(I know, kind of a lame question, but it came up at dinner tonight about the tobacco settlements and false advertising…)
Hmmm…I happen to have a can of Diet Coke with Lemon [sub]Pledge[/sub] here (Mr. Tamex drinks it to keep his boyish figure ;).) “Calories 0”. Very strange. I wonder what a can of regular Diet Coke says.
I Googled and got this page about “Disarming Honesty”. The gist of the idea is that you will win customers if you sound more honest. One of the companies who has successfully used this idea was the Coca-Cola Company.
According to this site, Coca-Cola was actually rounding up its number of calories! Would this cause the FDA to call the product “mislabeled”? I have no idea.
Hmmm…I happen to have a can of Diet Coke with Lemon [sub]Pledge[/sub] here (Mr. Tamex drinks it to keep his boyish figure ;).) “Calories 0”. Very strange. I wonder what a can of regular Diet Coke says.
I Googled and got this page about “Disarming Honesty”. The gist of the idea is that you will win customers if you sound more honest. One of the companies who has successfully used this idea was the Coca-Cola Company.
According to this site, Coca-Cola was actually rounding up its number of calories! Would this cause the FDA to call the product “mislabeled”? I have no idea.
My students and I determined that Diet Coke is about 99% water. Whatever the remaining 1% is, it’s not very caloric.
I buy the one calorie claim. However, the can in front of me claims zero calories.
The artificial sweeteners still have the same amount of calories as sugars, they just happen to be ~200 times sweeter so they only have to use 1/200th of the regular amount of sugar.
I don’t beleive this to be true. AFAIK The calories come from the additives to the aftificial sweetner to make measurable.
That’s because the “serving size” is only 6 fl.oz., or half a can. There’s probably something like 0.4 calories in half a can, allowing them to round down to zero.
I don’t know much about nutrition, but I do get serving sizes. For half-liter and up, Coke product nutrition information is given in servings of 8 oz, but for cans, it’s given in servings of 12 oz. If the can says 0 Calories, that’s for the whole can. I don’t know what the rules for rounding are, either, but I think they might not be totally intuitive.
There was a thread a while back asking for verification of a claim to the effect that diet drinks were just as fattening because the human body converts artificial sweetners into sugar (the answer was substantially negative).
Also, my class researched Sweet 'n Low. The package says “0 calorie granulated sugar substitute.” It also says it weighs one gram, and the Nutrition Facts tells us that there are zero calories and also one gram of sugar. So, how can it be a sugar substitute if it’s made of sugar? How can it have no caloires if it has a gram of sugar in it? Good questions for kids (and their teacher) to dig into, yes? We found that the FDA allows for the claim of zero calories because 4 calories is virtually none. Yep, that’s essentially what we found. Also, the dextrose is, as was mentioned above, the vehicle for the 36 milligrams of saccharin that does the bulk of the sweetening. Since most people use several grams of sugar - i.e. a teaspoon or more - this tiny package provides the same sweetening with just 4 calories. It is deceptive, no doubt. For people who need to watch their sugar intake, such as diabetics, it seems to border on the dangerous. For the unsuspecting (read: typical) consumer who thinks “zero calories” means “zero calories” and “sugar substitute” means “sugar substitute,” it’s interesting, to say the least.
Not anymore. They started calling the entire can “one serving” back when they switched to the “Nutrition Facts” labeling. Here’s a page that explains the reasoning behind that.
I found this even weirder UL about Diet Coke, though:
And then, even weirder:
Apparently, some people think that even one calorie is too good to be true.
Pepsi makes a point of saying they have the “flagship one-calorie brand Diet Pepsi”. And Pepsi One has one calorie – that’s where it gets the name. Maybe it was always Pepsi making this claim, rather than Coca-Cola.
If memory serves, it was Diet Pepsi and TaB that were marketed with having one calorie.
Jingles from memory:
"Now you see it, now you don’t
Here you have it, here you won’t
Oh, Diet Pepsi, one small calorie
Now you see it, now you don’t
That great Pepsi taste
Now your Pepsi won’t go to your waist
So now you see it, now you don’t
Diet Pepsi, one small calorie
Now you see it, now you don’t"
and
“Tab! Tab cola - what a beautiful drink
TaB! Tab cola - for beautiful people
(forgot some of the lines here)
One calorie - water zero
Tab! Tab cola - so beautiful to be
So good and sugar free - TaB!”
Coke ended up developing Diet Coke because TaB was seen as a “woman’s” drink and ended up getting a bigger share of the men’s market, but I don’t remember what the advertised calorie count was at that time.
At some point Diet Pepsi started labeling itself with 0 calories (perhaps after they quit making Pepsi Free?) and they developed Pepsi One in an effort to get men to buy it. (Because apparently one calorie is manly where none is not?!?!)
It’s not the additives, it’s the compound itself. Check out HowStuffWorks for a simple quote. Go here for a good history of aspartame. In the third paragraph they talk about its sweetness potency relative to sucrose.