By Bartow Elmore
Library book
Citizen Coke is a peak into the infrastructure of the sugar water giant the author groups this with other "extraction" industries like steel or lumber. The company take existing cheap surpluses ie, sugar and water anx made them into a product. The genius was letting others supply the products and becoming a consumer of these products. Unlike the vertical organizations that flourished in the period. Coke proved and pioneered that you dont need to own everything in your sector, better to buy it and run cheap. This "Coca-Cola capitalism" as the author refers to it was the model that would prove very effective not just for Coke but many other industries as well.
22 I hear Mr Burns saying "best drink since Mr Pemberton mixed his potions over at 107 Marrietta street.
26 Although Pemberton invented the formula and got the Coke phenomenon started, it was Asa Candler who pushed the product to national distribution.I
Hire's Root Beer was started about the same time as Coke, also Dr Pepper. These companies were the competition and together they started the soda fountain culture of the gilded age. Shortly Pepsi would come on the scene and give Coke a formidable adversary.
Pg 57 In the early years of Monsanto, the company was saved by a timely investment from Coke ti buy of saccharine stores. The author quotes the Monsanto corporate literature,"without Coke there would be no Monsanto. That sounds about right.
So this book tells the story of Coke by following the trail of the ingredients.
57 this is the sugar section and there is plenty of it. So much so that it would "overload consumers tastebuds were it not for the jigh concentrarions of acids" in the drink (can you say rust remover?). And get this,"the Ph is so low trucks transporting the concentrated mixture require hazzardous material signs." This is what we drink. Yikes!
The interventions of the governemnt and the aquisitions of the Spanish American War caused a sugar boom. The start of WWI changed all that. The unstable sugar prices caused alot of heartache for theass users like Coke. Pepsi actually went.out of business because of it and Hershey, another power user, barely hung on. That author says Hershey was a different kind of tycoon. He believed in spending the money in community to benefit all. When we visited Hershey park last year my Dad turned over a small trinket in the gift shop and it said made in China. When we checked further everyrhing said made in China. Naturally we were outraged and I imagine poor r Hershey is rolling in his grave over this travesty.
Pg 104 Coke sailed through the Depression years without a hitch. The outbreak of WWII brought new challenges. The "Boss" Robert Woodruff partnered Coke with the US military. And no lesser a soldier then Ike himself demaded Cokes for his soldiers. And with that partnership, Coke made all the sugar rationing go away, created the illusion of being patriotic, and assured the creation of millions of new thirsty customers after the war. Not only this but it ialso "sewed theds for foreign expansion" after the war (pg 107). Not bad for a sugar-water company. Pepsi, now back in business, was left both chagrined and outraged.
On to the Coca...
No secret really Coca Cola wanamed for cocaine amd had it as part of its ingredients for many years. Then public opinion turned away from the drug. Like marijuanna, it became associated with black people having a good time and there's no way.the man is gonna stand for that. Make it illegal. You have them black people sniffin that damn cocaine and gettin all wild and the next thing you know they'll be raping white women. I can just hear them. This is how the tide of oppressipn usually roles. We love to have beliefs and then impose them on others.
Didn't know this
Cocaineless cocaine extract is still in Coca Cola. They took it out when they went to New Coke figuring they could finally get rid.of it once and fo all, but no. Coke was reinstated under the name Coca Cola Classic and the coca exract called merchandise #5 was put back in. It remains today.
Now on to the caffeine:
Cover of Time Magazine 1950 at the height of Cokes power
269 Pollans' book The Omnivores Dillemma describes the fact that with HFCS being so cheap it created the aga of the Big Gulp, and we all asked them to Supersize it.
279 Apparently, artuficial sweetner is just as bad, if not worse, than real sugar. It does you no good to drink diet.
286 Here the aurhor talkes about the farm subsidies. And how counterproductive the whole program really is.
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