DAY 1 - Today I'm going to start my experiment on everything about Coke, which might also be a suffering for me as I have to refrain myself from drinking Coke for the next 14 days. I have mixed feeling of both excited and anxious whether I can live myself without Coke for the next two weeks. Oh God please give me strength for the next 14 days...
This experiment will examine the harmful effects of Coke to our health and whether once-in-a-while consumption of coke is safe for us. Also, we will get to know what can happen to our body if we continue to consume Coke regularly. As I'll only be posting the photo updates twice a week, I'm going to share about the history of Coke, Coke's consumption across the world, side effects of Coke, etc, on the days which I'm not posting the photos.
For my experiment, I use a slice of meat as my medium. The reason why I use a slice of meat is that it is similar to what we consume daily. The reaction that coke has on this slice of meat will be similar to the reaction that happens in our stomach once we digest the food we eat and drink coke at the same time.Will I still drink Coke upon seeing the result of my experiment after 14 days? I myself don't know.
This experiment will examine the harmful effects of Coke to our health and whether once-in-a-while consumption of coke is safe for us. Also, we will get to know what can happen to our body if we continue to consume Coke regularly. As I'll only be posting the photo updates twice a week, I'm going to share about the history of Coke, Coke's consumption across the world, side effects of Coke, etc, on the days which I'm not posting the photos.
For my experiment, I use a slice of meat as my medium. The reason why I use a slice of meat is that it is similar to what we consume daily. The reaction that coke has on this slice of meat will be similar to the reaction that happens in our stomach once we digest the food we eat and drink coke at the same time.Will I still drink Coke upon seeing the result of my experiment after 14 days? I myself don't know.
Here's the sample for two different meats which I got from two different supermarket yesterday. The final result of these meat will show how harmful Coke is.
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| meat that I got from market A |
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| meat that I got from market B |
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| Market A / Diet Coke |
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| Market A / Regular Coke |
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| Market B / Diet Coke |
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| Market B / Regular Coke |
the pictures below show 4 different containers pour in with diet Coke and regular Coke.
here's my final 4 containers. I will be leaving them until the next three days when I will be examining them again and take pictures of the containers.
the next data is about the increasing trend of coca-cola consumption per capita in some popular countries. Here, per capita means per person.
This table above shows how Coke consumption has rapidly grown during the past 20 years. In some developing countries like Brazil and Romania, the growth amazingly exceeds 100 %. The reason being maybe that Coke has been made available in these countries during the past two decades.
The summary below emphasizes Coke's consumption in the United States itself:-In the United States, an average person drinks 412 8-ounce drinks — or 3296 ounces — of Coke per year. This calculates to 39964 calories consumed per year by every American, or the equivalent of 20 days of recommended caloric intake in Coke alone. Coke soda represents 5% of recommended caloric intake for the average American.In comparison, the average global citizens consumes 85 8-ounce Cokes a year, the equivalent of 680 ounces or 8245 calories consumed in Coke per year.
http://www.prosebeforehos.com/image-of-the-day/10/13/coca-cola-consumption-per-capita/
By the way, I successfully passed my day without drinking coke today.yay!
DAY 3-While waiting for the next photo updates of my experiment which I'm going to upload tomorrow, I'm going to share with you guys the history of Coke. Most of us would be surprised of how Coke originated.
Here are some unique facts about Coke:
-Coca-Cola was first sold as a patent medicine at soda fountains for five cents a glass. Pemberton claimed that Coca-Cola was good for health and cured many diseases such as headache, impotence, morphine addiction The first sale of Coca-Cola was made at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta and on an average nine drinks were sold per day for first nine months. The first advertisement for the beverage appeared in Atlanta Journal on May 29.
-Coca-Cola was invented by John Stith Pemberton in Covington, Georgia in May 1886. The beverage was initially a cocawine and was called Pemberton’s French Wine Coca. After Atlanta and Fulton County passed Prohibition legislation, Pemberton made a carbonated, non-alcoholic version of French Wine Cola and called it Coca-Cola. Coca leaves from South America were added as a stimulant to the beverage along .with kola nuts which were added to give flavor to the drink. Due to them the name Coca-Cola was given to the beverage.
-Coca-Cola also contained nine milligrams of cocaine per glass till 1904, when they started using “spent” leaves instead of fresh leaves. The spent leaves were the leftovers of cocaine-extraction process and contained just traces of cocaine. But cocaine is still present in the drink as it is one of the alkaloids present in the drink.
For more information, please go to http://www.theoriginof.com/coca-cola.html
The picture on the left shows how the design of the coke bottle changes from time to time. It particularly shows the evolution of Coca-Cola bottle from the end of 1800s until the end of the following centuries, 1900s.
Have you guys ever imagined that Coke was first used as medicine? Do you know that Coke once contained Cocaine? I believe there's much more interesting facts about Coke that we never know.
DAY 4-Here we go, Today, I'm going to post picture updates from my experiment. Even after only three days, I can see the differences on the meat already,especially in its color and texture. So, long story cut short, here are the pictures. It may look gross, but nevertheless, enjoy!
The Coke seems to be concentrated by the juice from the meat. It's no longer clear. It looks disgusting and it does really stink. When I open this container to take a look at the meat, I felt like vomitting. The color of the meat also turned whiter.
This combination of meat from market A and regular Coke has produced a unique result. Yes, it's maybe not as disgusting as the previous result, but the reaction caused the meat to slowly lose its red color and produced small black substances on top of it. Eerie huh?
This reaction caused the fats from the meat to float on the Coke. The meat also turned from pale red into colorless. It used to be super red at first, but now the color's diminishing.
This combination between meat that I got from market B and regular Coke produces slowest reaction among all. The only thing I could observe was that the meat slightly turns colorless.
Before I checked this experiment, I actually was still craving for Coke. But after seeing this picture updates, I don't feel like drinking Coke anymore, even after 14 days when I finish my experiment.
DAY 5-While waiting for my next updates about my experiments, I am going to share about the design of a Coke can today. Do you guys think that a can of Coke only has the same design over and over again? Most of you will think it does. It's not always true afterall, sometimes, limited edition cans of Coke are offered for a short period of time to celebrate certain events in which Coke is a proud sponsor of the events. Let's check out some of the unique designs.
DAY 3-While waiting for the next photo updates of my experiment which I'm going to upload tomorrow, I'm going to share with you guys the history of Coke. Most of us would be surprised of how Coke originated.
Here are some unique facts about Coke:
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| first Coca-Cola can |
-Coca-Cola was invented by John Stith Pemberton in Covington, Georgia in May 1886. The beverage was initially a cocawine and was called Pemberton’s French Wine Coca. After Atlanta and Fulton County passed Prohibition legislation, Pemberton made a carbonated, non-alcoholic version of French Wine Cola and called it Coca-Cola. Coca leaves from South America were added as a stimulant to the beverage along .with kola nuts which were added to give flavor to the drink. Due to them the name Coca-Cola was given to the beverage.
-Coca-Cola also contained nine milligrams of cocaine per glass till 1904, when they started using “spent” leaves instead of fresh leaves. The spent leaves were the leftovers of cocaine-extraction process and contained just traces of cocaine. But cocaine is still present in the drink as it is one of the alkaloids present in the drink.
For more information, please go to http://www.theoriginof.com/coca-cola.html
Have you guys ever imagined that Coke was first used as medicine? Do you know that Coke once contained Cocaine? I believe there's much more interesting facts about Coke that we never know.
DAY 4-Here we go, Today, I'm going to post picture updates from my experiment. Even after only three days, I can see the differences on the meat already,especially in its color and texture. So, long story cut short, here are the pictures. It may look gross, but nevertheless, enjoy!
Before I checked this experiment, I actually was still craving for Coke. But after seeing this picture updates, I don't feel like drinking Coke anymore, even after 14 days when I finish my experiment.
DAY 5-While waiting for my next updates about my experiments, I am going to share about the design of a Coke can today. Do you guys think that a can of Coke only has the same design over and over again? Most of you will think it does. It's not always true afterall, sometimes, limited edition cans of Coke are offered for a short period of time to celebrate certain events in which Coke is a proud sponsor of the events. Let's check out some of the unique designs.
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| Women's heart health programs |
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| Peace Day edition |
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| Ramadan's Limited Edition |
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| Summer's Limited Edition |
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| Vancouver '10 Winter Olympics Games Edition |
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| Valentine's Day edition The pictures shown above show different, unique design of coca-cola cans. Here more details about the cans. 1. Women's heart health programs edition.This limited edition of Diet Coke is created as The Coca-cola company tries to raise awareness of the public to support the women's heart health programs. This design seems to be non-profit in purpose as most the sales from these limited edition cans will go to charity. 2. Peace Day Edition. This can is designed to promote peace around the world. Uniquely, The Coca-Cola company works with Unicef to convey this message. It can visibly seen from the Unicef logo displayed on the can. 3. Ramadan's Limited Edition. This edition is made to celebrate the month of Ramadan, the month in which Muslims have to fast for the whole month as their ritual. Sadly, this edition is not available everywhere but only in countries where there is a large population of Muslims. 4. Summer's Limited Edition. This edition was launched during the summer and it's only made available during the summer. The five cans above portrays everything connected with summer. Surfing, Volleyball, Sunglasses, Barbeque, and Party. 5. Vancouver '10 Winter Olympics Edition. This design commemorates Coca-Cola as a proud sponsor of the Winter Olympic games. Not only for the 2010 Olympic Games, Coca-cola is also a major sponsor for summer Olympics, for example Athens 2004 and Beijing 2008. 6. Valentine's Day edition. This edition was released and sold only for a few days before Valentine's day. Unfortunately, it is only available in South Korea. After seeing these designs, I become interested in collecting limited editions of Coca-cola cans. Looking at these cans is just as good as having Coca-cola. DAY 6-Still, there's no photo updates yet for today. Meanwhile, I am going to share about how the company that produces Coke gained its popularity and made itself one of the most successful companies in the world. In fact, The Coca-Cola Company has always believed in advertising, and that belief has taken it to the top of the mountain. Fantastic, colorful, wholesome, and memory provoking are just a few of the words and phrases that can be used to describe Coca-Cola advertising. Here are some photos from popular Coke advertisements.     What I noticed from these four advertisements that basically, they convey the same message that the company wants to deliver to customers. They give the impression that each time we drink Coke is a new experience, although the taste is the same over and over again. It also explains that Coke is not just a refreshing drink. It refreshes your mind, your body, your soul to start your new day. The most interesting advertisement would be the last one. It says "Tea Break". Tea break is something that we have daily, so this advertisement urges us to have Coke daily. This is unique. It's true that Coke gained its popularity mainly by advertisements though. Most of these advertisements are shown regularly on television and huge billboards on the street, so that more people become aware of it. These advertisements serve to sell the product and it's true, Coke is consumed by millions of people nowadays. If you are interested about Coke's advertisements, please visit this website, it show top 50 Coke's advertisements from 1889(the year in which Coke was created) until present days. http://www.beautifullife.info/advertisment/history-of-coca-cola-in-ads/ Enjoy! :) Day 7- Woww. Time flies so fast. My experiment almost enters the second week already. Earlier on today, as I was looking for more information and articles about Coke, I found this amazing information. Guess what, The Coca-Cola Company in fact established “Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation” in 2006.  Here are more information about the foundation. The foundation allocates huge sum of money to provide scholarships for high school students who desire to go to college, yet they can’t afford it. So, this foundation can be a media for these students to make their dream come true. It also encourages competition among students as only few selected students out of thousands who apply will be awarded with the scholarship. The Coca−Cola Scholars Foundation supports over 1,400 college students each year, with annual scholarships of $3.4 million through two nationally recognized programs on behalf of the Coca−Cola System. The foundation, nevertheless, won’t be able to make this happen without the help of numerous sponsors who are willing to support this movement. Some of the notable sponsors are for example, The Coca-cola company itself, Delta Airlines, Staples, Canon USA, HP, American Express, and All-state insurance company. I believe the Coca-Cola company has set a good example for other companies to follow. The consumers/community has helped the companies a lot by purchasing their products, so it’s time for them to return back something to the community. It’s good to reward people for their contribution. Offering scholarships like what this company do, is one excellent example for sure. DAY 8- Finally it's time for my second photo updates! woohoo! I was surprised on what my meat turned out to be. It looks much more gross than the previous one, and this time I have to close my nose as I can't stand the stinky smell of the meat. Before this, I put the containers inside my apartment. However, I decided to put it at the balcony as the smell is too disturbing. So, here are the photos.     DAY 9- Great! My experiment has entered to the second week already. As I have posted entries about the history of Coke, Coke,advertisements, Coke's consumption across the world, and everything about Coke on the first half of my experiment, now I am going to start posting about the negative health impacts of consuming Coke for the second half of my experiment. Today, we are going to explore about diabetes, the most dangerous and the most common effect caused by regular consumption of Coke. In fact, Coke not only contains excessive amount of sugar, but also High Fructose Corn Syrup(HFCS), which is a substance that is believed to cause Diabetes. According to Dr. Chi-Tang Ho from Rutgers University, "HFCS is a sweetener found in many foods and beverages, including non-diet soda pop, baked goods, and condiments. It is has become the sweetener of choice for many food manufacturers because it is considered more economical, sweeter and more easy to blend into beverages than table sugar. Some researchers have suggested that high-fructose corn syrup may contribute to an increased risk of diabetes"  DAY 10- Wohooo, yes, it is day 10! Today I’m going to share a negative effect of drinking Coke which is somehow connected to my post about diabetes yesterday. It’s about SUGAR RUSH. By definition, according to urbandictionary.com, Sugar rush is “the high one gets after consuming large amounts of sugar.” Consuming excessive amounts of sugar actually causes our brain to release a kind of dopamine(mostly known as doping), resulting in a mild sense of euphoria. Sugar rush does not last very long usually; However, it leaves a person feeling drained and unnaturally tired afterwards. Although the company removed the cocaine, a kind of doping which the company used in first time making Coke about a hundred years ago, Coke still can cause sugar rush as a result of high sugar amount that it contains. Here’s the chronology of what happens,   First 10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) Can you imagine consuming 10 teaspoons of sugar at one time? In addition, every single day when we drink a can of Coke, we exceed our recommended daily intake of sugar for sure. After 20 minutes: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. After 45 minutes: Your body ups your dopamine production, stimulating the pleasure centers of your brain. This is physically the same way heroin works, by the way. After more than 60 minutes: As the rave inside you dies down, you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. After knowing this information, I realized that it does happen for real. Everytime we drink Coke, we feel refreshed at that particular instance. However, everyone of us will feel bloated and experience a kind of nausea after some time for sure. Now, I know. It’s the effect of the sugar rush. DAY 11-Countdown to end of my experiment has started already. Today I'm posting my second last update for my experiment. Most of you would think it's a good thing as you won't have to see these gross pictures anymore after this. But please understand me, I have to post these pictures for the sake of my experiment :) Here comes the photos.     Surprisingly, there no much difference that I could observe. I think there's no much reaction going on within the last 3 days although there was visible and clear difference from my second updates (Day 4) to my third updates (Day 8). Will there be changes within the next three days when I need to make conclusion about my experiment? Or is this the final result? *thinking* DAY 12- As I have already uploaded photo updates for my experiment yesterday, now it’s time for me to explore about more negative effect of drinking Coke again. And this time, I’m going to share information about OBESITIES. As we know, America has the highest rate of obesity in the world. What led to this? Together with consumption of fast food, lack of exercise, consumption of sodas, make up the majority of things that contribute to this obesity. Consuming Coke too much regularly DOES cause obesity. According to a study in UCLA, regular soda consumption significantly increases a person’s risk of obesity.  “Researchers interviewed 40,000 adults on their beverage consumption habits, finding that adults who drank one sugary beverage per day were 27 percent more likely to be classified as overweight than those who drank sugary beverages less frequently.” The Major reason for this obesity is also the excessive amount of sugar contained in a can of Coke. More sugar just basically means more calories. When we drink a can of Coke, we actually consume 10 teaspoons of SUGAR. Yes, it’s for REAL. It is the amount recommended for our daily intake! Here's some illustration showing how Coke can make you fat.  In order to counter criticism from the society, the Coca-Cola Company created a solution for our nation's obesity epidemic: A smaller can of Coke. Here's how the two sizes of Coke cans compare.  On the small can it says "90 calories." It's true. It's better than the 140 calories contained in a regular can of Coke. But still, it's equivalent to 5 teaspoons of sugar. Will it reduce the risk of obesity? I bet it will, but only to a very small extent for sure. DAY 13-Here comes my second last post for my 14-days experiment. I am going to share about a negative health effect of drinking Coke again for today. But for this one, I believe many of you may not have realized this fact. Coke DOES CONTAIN CAFFEINE, and if we drink Coke too often, we may suffer from CAFFEINE DEPENDENCE.  Maybe most people don't know about this as it was not even stated in the nutrition facts. Interesting.  The side effects from caffeine dependence would be that the consumers would experience some kind of headache, fatigue, nausea, muscle pain, and feeling of vomiting when their consumption decrease. In fact, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Roland R.
Griffiths, MD, conducted a research, and discovered that caffeine withdrawal can strike people who drink even just a can of caffeinated soft drinks everyday. It's scary but true! You may want to take a closer look at just how much caffeine you get in a typical day, especially if you're bothered by headaches, restlessness or anxiety. And more amazingly, the caffeine content of Coke does not differ my much from popular drinks containing caffeine. For example, A "Starbucks Frapuccino Blended Coffee" bottle contains 115 mg of caffeine, brewed tea contains 60 mg of caffeine, a can of Redbull energy drinks contains 80 mg of caffeine, and so on. If you are curious about the caffeine content in most drinks, you can visit this website, http://www.cspinet.org/new/cafchart.htm  DAY 14- Today is the last day of my experiment. And here are the final photos for the meat after 14 days.     These 4 pictures above show how dangerous Coke is. The meat seems to produce small black substance, shrink, and lose its color even just because we put them in contact with the Coke. The coke has caused the meat to rot and produce a very unpleasant smell. From all these containers, we can conclude that actually Regular Coke does have a more corrosive effect to the meat compared to Diet Coke. The last two containers, which was poured with Coke have more pale liquid and the meat inside don't look like a normal meat anymore.  Here's the last photo of my 4 containers before I threw them away. I used to put them inside my apartment. But after realizing that they are too smelly and produce a very pungent smell, I decided to put them at the balcony. I had to put them inside the the plastic bag and tie them everytime I finished taking pictures, and moreover put them in a box and wrap them so that the smell wouldn't spread anywhere. I beg your pardon if any of you guys are disgusted with the picture updates about the meat during the last 14 days. I am just carrying my experiment. If you guys don't believe this experiment of mine, you can try it on your own although I can't guarantee that you can't stand the smell each you take the picture update :) CONCLUSION Time flew so fast. My 14-days experiment has come to an end already. I feel good upon finishing this experiment, yet I will feel strange in the next few days for sure. Usually, I anticipate blogging my posts about this experiment so much after school, but I won’t have to do this anymore after today. This project basically explores about Coke and its presence among us. Though many people would probably think that my blog is kind of biased as I only tell about the negative effects and not including the positive effects of drinking Coke, I have no intention to defame Coke’s popularity nor to discourage people from drinking Coke at all. I myself love to drink Coke so much. I somehow just realized how important it is to raise concern about the potential side effects of drinking this soda. Surprisingly, we drink Coke as much as we drink water; It’s been a part of our diet. Most of us are not fully aware that drinking too much Coke has some serious side effects on our body, which could even be life threatening as well. Some examples of the side effects are obesities, diabetes, caffeine dependence, and many others. I purposely designed this blog page in a certain way so that it appeals to the readers, and at the same time being educational. Although my experiment mainly focuses on the negative effects of drinking Coke, I tried putting in some interesting facts to make my page more attractive. For example, I made some posts in the first half of my experiment about Coke’s advertisements, Limited edition Coke, Coke consumptions throughout the world, etc. I came up with this idea because I knew it would have been boring if I only uploaded photos of the meat in the containers day by day. In every post that I make, I also include some pictures that help visualize and convey my idea, yet I still elaborate my points so that the readers get the message I’m trying to deliver. This is the major change that I made after receiving back my proposal as I didn’t not explain enough in my proposal beforehand. In this project, actually I didn’t stick to what I had originally planned. But wait, I made this blog much more interesting instead, compared to if I had stick strictly to the original idea in my proposal. So it’s better actually. In the original plan, I stated that I would only tell about the history of Coke besides sharing about the negative effects. But what is on this blog is more than that. The idea is still there but I bring in more information and facts into the blog. After these 14 days experiment I discovered things that I had not known earlier. Through the reaction that happens in the meat, we can clearly see how strong and corrosive Coke is. Have you ever wondered if that happens in our stomach? Yes, it would be nasty to imagine that. Maybe, just maybe, we should decrease our Coke consumption. We used to hear rumors about the danger of drinking Coke only, but now , we also have evidences for it. The condition of the meat explains everything. In addition, This experiment is kind of beneficial for me also. In the first place, I only wanted to carry this experiment primarily to share information to readers. However, I don’t feel like drinking Coke anymore now. I had taken any measures before to cure my addiction to Coke but it always failed. At the same time, I also realized the importance of being healthy more importantly. Drinking Coke once in a while is fine, but having it for regular consumption is way dangerous. We have discovered almost all facts in this experiment. Perhaps it can also help other people who are trying to refrain from drinking Coke too. In retrospect, hopefully, this documentation of mine may become informational for all the readers. Thank you. |
