Rollback

I grew up having one bottle of fizzy drink per week from the Corona lorry which was shared with my three brothers! We took turns in choosing the flavour - cherryade for me! As parents we bought on 1.5 litre of coke at the weekend that was shared between 4/5 of us.

I noticed that children who were banned from fizzy drinks and sweets would gorge themselves given the opportunity, especially when they started secondary school. Everything in moderation IMHO.

janeainsqorth you could say that of lots of foods and drinks - alcohol for example - but the fact remains that many people have the occasional glass of coke when out and that is as far as it goes, just as plenty of people have one alcoholic drink now and again and feel no desire to have more, or the occasional bag of sweets or slice of cream cake.

Everyone has the free will to make decisions about what they eat and drink and must live and eventually die by their choices. There are plenty of take aways that are no more nutritious than a can of coke and much, much higher in calories.

Demonising one food or source of food just means we ignore the fact that many other meals, eaten to excess but cooked from scratch in people's homes and eaten at a table are overlooked as a source of an unhealthy unbalanced diet

MOnica I think if you are going to say the occasional glass of coke does you no harm, that has to be qualified by the observation that most people who drink it, don’t drink it occasionally. They drink it a lot, and it’s likely that their diet will contain a lot more refined sugars as well as the coke they drink.
A can of coke contains almost the whole of the WHO recommended daily allowance of sugar.
And if it’s sweetened with high fructose corn syrup, that’s even more harmful than if it’s sweetened with sucrose, because HFCS is metabolised differently. It goes straight to the liver where is is changed into fat.
While I generally agree with you that there are no unhealthy foods, only unhealthy diets, I think it’s stretching it to say that Coca Cola can be part of a healthy diet, because it has no nutritive value and contains high levels of potentially harmful substances.
“Besides water, sugar is the most heavily used ingredient in the Coke mix in terms of volume. One can of Coke contains roughly 35 grams, or 8 teaspoons, of sugar.

Coca-Cola is sweetened with pure cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, according to where the drink is actually produced. American consumers drink Coke Classic made of high-fructose corn syrup, which is cheaper to acquire and transport within temperate climates.

Phosphoric acid is an added chemical that provides "kick," or a sharp and sour taste. Coca-Cola is also made of caramel and "additional flavors," many of which remain heavily guarded components of the secret formula. Competing cola drinks are known to feature vanilla, lime and nutmeg for extra flavoring.”
history of coca cola manufacture
I’ll stick to beer and wine thank you

In moderation all foods are healthy. I eat a lot of rhubarb, but not enough to poison me, ditto for potatoes and onions.All three are also full of substances we need for the balanced diet that gives us the best chance of a healthy life.

As I said right at the start a bit of what you fancy does you good. Over do it and you could be in trouble. People have died from drinking too much water,

It depends on how you define “food” and “health”!
We need food to live, pure and simple. Unadulterated food is our nutrition - it is the amount which causes problems. (I am not talking about nut allergies, gluten intolerance etc of course.)
Many additives and chemicals can also be “healthy” - medicines are chemicals after all and very necessary in the right place and the right quantity.
The arguments about “healthy living” are often too simplistic and don’t let us fool ourselves that all was well in the past.
How many people died of TB before the pasteurisation of milk? And as for the widespread adulteration of foodstuffs in Victorian times , yes the industrial revolution and urbanisation of society led to some appalling abuses- outright poisoning in some cases.
My bottom line is however that what we put in our bodies is our own responsibility, not that of the supermarkets. BOGOFS and special offers are not evil in themselves and we are not forced to buy them.

But MOnica Your post yesterday generalised and said "All foods are healthy" whereas I pointed out they are not.

Sparklefizz I am not ignoring everything you say, on the contrary, I am engaging with it, giving it considerable thought and research (see the links in my previous post) and then giving my considered opinion, which everyone is free to accept, reject or quibble with

Actually I do not like coca cola and never drink it, in fact I do not like most canned or bottled drinks. Fizzy water is about as far as I go. But that is personal taste not because I have any worries about whether they are 'healthy' or not.

Plenty of 'natural' foods contain poisons including potatoes, which contain solanin. The fruit that grow on the potato plant can contain such high quantities that they are lethall, onions and rhubarb contain oxalic acid. Again the leaves and roots of rhubarb can contain lethal amounts.

MOnica You are free to totally ignore anything I say and eat and drink what you like, even if I personally wouldn't touch it. I don't enjoy banging my head against a brick wall.

As I child I liked Tizer and Dandelion and Burdock - were they as unhealthy as Coke? We used to take the bottles back, however!

The idea that our grandparents or great grandparents some how ate 'chemical' free food is ridiculous. the reason we have so much food and drink legislation is because their food was so widely contaminated. Chalk in flour, milk watered down, fruit and vegetables grown in fields fertilised with human waste, the list is endless. Read this to really get a hang on it: www.artisanfoodlaw.co.uk/history-of-food-law/19th-century/history-of-food-law-19th-century And they had take aways, fish & chips, many people were even poorer than they are now, lived in accommodation with no way of cooking or heating themselves. The only cooked food they could eat was food bought from street vendors and with no rules on hygiene, the amount of food poisoning was many times what it is now.

Go to this link and see what Coca Cola is made from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_formula Not half as bad as you suggest and it also gives a recipe to make your own.

I can still see no harm in enjoying a glass of cola of any make with a Sunday lunch.

I was dumbing down to get my point across after Monica stated it was fine to drink a glass of chemicals, not sitting an exam.

As someone who did a degree in chemistry, it's your terminology that concerns me. Chemicals are chemicals, whether they are naturally occurring or not and everything that exists consists of them. Some are 'good', some are not. As a nutritionist, surely you know that your comment about 'drinking a glass of chemicals' is unscientific to say the least.

Yes Badenkate vinegar and lemon juice are acids, the same as fruit juices can be acidic, but they are still foods, and I'm sure you know that they take the enamel off your teeth if you don't rinse your mouth after ingesting them. We all know about "acid erosion" these days.

However, vinegar and lemon juice are not manufactured chemicals full of toxins. Back in the early 70s, a friend's husband worked for a food company who manufactured "Smash" instant mashed potato, and also "Angel Delight" dessert. He said that the base mixture was the same for both, just with different flavourings, so not real food at all.

And that is my point .... real food as opposed to chemically manufactured food (and drink).

But Sparklefizz, everything consists of 'chemicals'. I'm not defending coca cola but that's just a lazy definition. As I'm sure you know, vinegar and lemon juice are acids which can also be used as cleaning agents, but we don't usually worry about putting those into our body.

a little of what you fancy does you good

But MOnica, that saying was in our grandparents' day when there was no junk food, no takeaways, etc.

Many of these products are addictive and are manufactured to be so .... people can't stop at "a little". If you understand how the body works, then you know what processes kick into play when you swallow certain foods and drinks. This is why, when people's bodies have to keep producing insulin to balance their blood glucose to cope with the food and drink they stuff themselves with, they become insulin-resistant and eventually develop Type 2.

Obviously not every person who is Type 2 has done this, so please don't think I am getting at anyone ..... but many have, hence the obesity and Type 2 crisis.

I have been studying nutrition for 29 years, and there is no way I would touch Coke or Diet Coke. Did you never do "the penny test" in Coke as a teenager? Have you not seen the cleaning hacks of using Coke to clear a toilet covered in limescale?

I can't believe you have said that it's ok to drink a glass of chemicals, Monica.

How would money off or a bogof not save you money, ayse, unless of course you’re buying something you don’t eat or use anyway (and why would you ever do that)?

An occasional glass of coke will do you no harm at all, whether it is made from chemicals or natural products.

Neither will chips, take-aways, biscuits, alcohol, sugar in any form. As the saying goes; a little of what you fancy will do your good

I don’t really see what “Rolled back” prices have to do with health or healthy living products unless you are talking about companies like Holland and Barrett.
Supermarkets are not our keeper and it is up to us to choose what we want to eat - and take the consequences.

I’m staggered that so many folk are taken in by all the marketing. I rarely buy anything that is on special or bogof as it rarely saves me money.
I usually look at both Aldi and Lidl to see what fruit and veg is on offer.

Coca-cola isn't a food, it's a chemical.
Diet Coke is even worse!

MOnica I disagree. There are plenty of unhealthy foods and drinks. eg. what is healthy about Coca Cola? (other colas are available ) There are foods that harm and foods that heal, but I accept that portion-size also plays its part.

All foods are healthy. It is how much you eat of them that makes your diet healthy or unhealthy.

Not sure many supermarkets are genuinely interested in our health. Their god is profits.