One hundred and twenty-three years ago today, Americans were introduced to a drink that would change the world, for better or worseOn this day in 1886, those who opened up the pages of the Atlanta Journal were the first to see an advertisement for a product that would eventually become one of the world’s most ubiquitous beverages: Coca-Cola, also known as Coke.
Invented by American chemist John Pemberton, the drink was originally promoted as a “valuable brain tonic” that, among other health benefits, was touted as a cure for opium and morphine addiction. The recipe that gives Coke its unique taste is a closely guarded secret, known only to a handful of executives. It is widely believed to have contained, at least at one time, coca leaf (from which cocaine is made) and kola nut extract, hence the name Coca-Cola.
But there are a couple of ingredients in Diet Coke (Coke's sugar-free version) and many other diet soft drinks that are not secret -- and rather controversial: potassium benzoate and aspartame (also known by its trade name NutraSweet).
Potassium benzoate is used as a preservative to prevent the growth of mold and bacteria. However, according to the United States Food & Drug Administration (FDA), "Benzene can form at very low levels (ppb level) in some beverages that contain both benzoate salts and ascorbic acid (vitamin C)." Benzene is a known carcinogen.
In 2007, the Coca-Cola Company settled a lawsuit over two of its drinks -- Fanta Pineapple and Vault Zero -- which contained the benzene-forming mix. These drinks were discontinued.
The other chemical that is under fire, aspartame, is an artificial sweetener developed by G.D. Searle & Company in the mid-1960s. Found in a number of diet soft drinks, many scientists believe that it can cause a number of serious illnesses, including cancer, brain tumors and lymphoma.
In 2006, Natural News published an interview with Russell Blaylock, a leading American neurosurgeon and associate editor of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, who cited an Italian study that linked aspartame with leukemia.
According to a story by Anthony Wile for Health Freedom Alliance, "The Ramazzini Institute in Bologna...released the results of a very large, long-term animal study into aspartame ingestion. Its study shows that aspartame causes lymphomas and leukemia in female animals fed aspartame at doses around 20 milligrams per kilogram of body weight, or around half the accepted daily intake for humans. Health problems linked to aspartame reportedly include arthritis, brain cancer, memory loss, hearing loss, hypertension, abdominal pain, headache and migraines."
When asked how the beverage industry "managed to suppress this information and keep this chemical legal in the food supply," Dr. Blaylock replied, "Donald Rumsfeld was the one who pushed a lot of this through, when he was in the chairmanship of the G.D. Searle company...he got it approved through the regulatory process, but once it was approved, the government didn't want to admit that they had made a mistake. They just continued to cover it up, like the fluoride thing and the milk industry."
From 1977 to 1985, former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld held three executive positions at Searle -- chief executive officer, president and finally chairman.
In 1974, the use of aspartame was approved by the FDA. But a year later, after the Department of Justice began an investigation of Searle for fraud concerning its aspartame studies, the FDA issued a stay on the chemical's approval.
Then in 1981, FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes approved the use of aspartame. Two years later, he left the FDA to become the senior medical advisor for the large public-relations firm Burson-Marsteller. Among its clients? Searle. Conspiracy theories were born.
"Rumsfeld’s major mission while he was in that job was to get this...approved for release for sale to the public, which he finally managed to do, but only after the Reagan administration came in, whereupon the FDA commissioner was promptly fired, and someone more obedient was put in, who, of course, approved release," said Andrew Cockburn, the author of Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy, in a DemocracyNow.org interview.
Two years after Rumsfeld left Searle, amid continuing public concern surrounding aspartame, Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum requested that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigate the process that led to the FDA approval. The GAO report found "no evidence of pressure on the former FDA Commissioner to approve aspartame," and that "12 of the 69 scientists responding to its questionnaire expressed major concerns about aspartame safety."
In 2007, New Mexico introduced a bill to ban aspartame. Earlier this year, Hawaiian lawmakers signed a petition calling for the FDA to revoke their approval of aspartame.
As the controversy about aspartame and other additives continues, so does the consumption of beverages that have, in some form or another, been sold to consumers as "valuable brain tonics."
With soft drinks sales approaching $400 billion worldwide, these tonics are valuable indeed, but perhaps not so much for our brains.
photo: Drink Coca-Cola 5¢", an 1890s advertising poster showing a woman in fancy clothes (partially vaguely influenced by 16th- and 17th-century styles) drinking Coke. The card on the table says "Home Office, The Coca-Cola Co. Atlanta Ga. Branches: Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Dallas". Notice the cross-shaped color registration marks near the bottom center and top center (which presumably would have been removed for a production print run). Someone has crudely written on it at lower left (with an apparent leaking fountain pen) "Our Faovrite" [sic]. (U.S. Library of Congress)
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