Coca Cola Review

If I was dramatic, I might say that my writing a review set the entire Coca Cola intelligence machine into action. I could paint a picture of wires tapped and commandos sliding down ropes dangling from black helicopters. All very cool, but the sad fact is that Coke is so huge and so prevalent that their CEO himself could declare it was made of human feces, angel ashes, and rendered baby fat and it wouldn't impinge on sales at all. Not even if he showed video to prove it. Hell, Coke HAS murdered people according to these sources....

http://killercoke.org/crimes.htm
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_20311.cfm

Nobody cares.

Instead of covering the wide world which is Coca Cola, I'm going to focus in it's two greatest failings. Coca Cola, the great American drink, tastes more like Coca Cola the further you get from the USA. What we drink here isn't Coke, it's something else - a half-assed doppleganger too lazy to even roll its own hit dice.

If you want Coke, go to Mexico. Or Bermuda. Or Europe. I can't vouch for it in Asia or Canada, though, but I bet it's delicious there too. You try here in the US of A, it's crap. Total crap.

Coke the company is cheap cheap cheap. To make an extra few pennies they sell you corn syrup instead of sugar, and try to tell you there's no difference. Stop and actually taste the next American made Coke you drink, think about the taste of burnt wheat as you drink it. Focus on that odd sensation of sweetness, because it isn't sweet. It's something else entirely, something masquerading as sweet but failing upon any sort of second glance at all. Revel in the slimy coating it leaves on your tongue and teeth - you don't get that with sugared version.

Other sodas use corn syrup but it's Coke that suffers the most from this foul practice. Sugared Coke is delicious, possibly one of mankinds most delicious drinks. Corn syrup Coke is foul. This bitter is made all the more bitter by Coke having had the furthest to fall, from an astoundingly perfect soft drink to the worst of the worst. Poor poor Coke, cast from the garden and molded into a new Satan - by it's own choice. Boo!

Murder and incredibly unhealthy corn syrup and bad taste aside, Coke also suffers one of the worst sins a mass produced consumable might engage in. It's inconsistent in taste and quality.

Some Cokes are more burned tasting than others. Some cokes are more or less chemical tasting than others. Even carbonation can be inconsistent, from watery nothing to something tasting more like carbonated gas water sans syrup. Long ago I called Coke to ask why. They told me that it was the vagaries of the shipping process, that maybe the bad Coke I had drank was frozen at one point. Or was too old for consumption. Or whatever.

Well, Coke, I say you're full of shit. I've drank your demon brew from one coast to another and it always tastes different. Always. You're the biggest company in the universe and you can't even keep your product straight. Spend a little less time worrying about getting the red on the can within a half percent margin of consistency and try getting the horrible beverage you serve back on track. Please.

The reason that Coke changed to a chemical swill was because of consistency issues. Lemon, a prime ingredient, was unavailable in consistent quality year round. In the name of making consumers happy, they used a chemical lemon substitute. Repeat for every other ingredient and what are you left with? A chemical formula which should be perfectly reproducible, but they don't reproduce it and don't even seem to try.

Coke is huge and almighty. If they can't manage to give us a delicious and trustworthy drink it's because they choose not to. They know that consumers don't drink Coke for any reason other than that it comes in the shiny red can that they have been buying for their whole lives. They save two dollars a year by churning out a cheaper product and no one cares or notices because nobody cares or notices.

Coke is a huge failure as far as trustworthiness goes, but consumers are idiots so its a perfect match.

Let's recap:

Coke, the American drink, tastes better the further you get from the USA. This is because US producers use corn syrup, overseas they tend towards sugar.

Coke, a chemical formula, is incredibly inconsistent between cans. It can taste like burned wheat, or random chemicals, or very rarely like Coca Cola. The company doesn't seem to care about consistency and quality.

Coke has allegedly done incredibly wicked deeds overseas. You are practically drinking blood.

Within the next month, I'll drink a Coke. You probably will too. And that sucks because Coke has become the default drink, and everytime we grab one we are letting the company know that we don't care about quality.

This all applies to canned and bottled Coke. Between the containers I would say there is variance, with small plastic bottles of Coke tasting the worst and 2 liters tasting the best.

None of this, though, applies to fountain coke. Not even the human rights part. Fountain Coke generally rocks.

You know what. I'm going to take a vow that I am going to stop drinking regular Coca Cola. I might drink another Coke product, or I might drink Caffeine Free sugared coke, and I'll drink Mexicoke or other sugared variants, but no more regular Coke. You hear that Coke? I'm sick of your lousy, inconsistent taste which even at it's best isn't that good. And I'll probably feel better about myself too, knowing that I'm doing less to support the possible wickedness they are engaged in.

So there.