Ms Paige Lewis

ENC 1102
23 November 2014
Milica Kubura

Coca Cola Zero Magic

It was another hot day in Florida after yet another week of an unbearably hot
summer. I was walking home from training, tired, sore and thirsty. I really wanted to
refresh myself with a bottle of Coca Cola, but the athletic department had just given a
lecture about how harmful sugar can be for athletes. Also, the last thing that I needed was
to gain weight. And then, as if someone had read my mind, I found myself in front of a
huge billboard with picture of a very athletic, handsome football player with ball in one
hand and Coca Cola Zero in another. It said: Raise your game. Zero sugar, zero calories.
Real Coca Cola taste. The very well-known combination of black, white and red color
made me want Coca Cola even more. I ran to the first store I came across, bought a bottle
of Coke Zero, and went home satisfied and without fear of gaining weight. After several
instances of this, I began having really unpleasant problems with my stomach. I also
started being very nervous and I had difficulties maintaining concentration while
studying. First, I thought I was just tired. But when I visited a doctor and told him my
symptoms he immediately asked me if I had consumed any Coke Zero. He told me that
aspartame, the sweetener that replaces sugar in Diet Sodas, can cause depression and is
toxic if consumed in high doses. I couldnt believe what the doctor was telling me. The
advertisers that made the commercial were so convincing when they said that Coke Zero

would benefit you, that I couldnt believe that there were consequences.

I am continually terrified by the fact that the only thing that is important in
todays society is money. The billboard that I saw was obviously made with
impressionable young people and athletes in mind. It presents a football player refreshing
himself with Coke Zero, and there is no kid in the USA that would not aspire to be as
successful as the football players they see on TV. Families spend hours and hours
gathered in front of TV cheering for their favorite team, and even louder for their favorite
player. So, if one of their favorite athletes was shown drinking Coca Cola Zero to raise
his game (as the ad said), why wouldnt they follow him? That is actually the part of this
ad that upsets me the most the sentence Raise your game. It misleads young athletes
by encouraging them to drink Coca Cola in unlimited amounts. There is no evidence that

any athlete has ever benefited from drinking Coke, but Coca Cola ads imply that their
product improves an athletes ability without any proof or consequences. At the
beginning of every game, the score is zero-zero. Anything can happen. With its real
Coca-Cola taste and zero calories, Coke Zero proves this is true off the field too ("Coke
Zero Football." Coke Zero Football. Keg Portfolio, Mar.-Apr. 2013. Web. 23 Nov. 2014). That

is what creators of football edition ads used to attract people . It just left me speechless. I
could imagine children begging their parents to buy them Coke Zero, because they
learned that they could be as cool and as famous athletes are, even off the court and
without a lot of effort. They just need to buy Coke and drink it in front of everybody and
they can own the world. That is what kids hear from Coca Cola Company ads. The
message of all these commercials is that you can have everything: you can taste sugar
without eating it; you can be an athlete and enjoy fast food at the same time. In truth, they
directly contradict values that parents are constantly trying to teach their own children
such a moderation and discipline.

Another way that the Coca Cola Company promotes their product is through
the colors: red, white, and black. There is nothing mild, nothing weak about these colors.
Instead, these three flashy colors give us sense of strength and power. They make us feel
alive and relevant. Can you imagine if they decide to put colors like grey or light blue on
the billboard? I can bet that the entire commercial would be much less effective and
conspicuous. If they used more pastel colors, it would not represent the idea that drinking
Coke makes you exciting and important. We usually associate these colors with

something that is made for babies, something cute and innocent. Coca Cola is promoting
an image of danger and daring excitement, and baby chicks are not terribly cool.

Doesnt replacing regular Coca Cola, that is basically pure sugar, with one that
neither contains calories nor sugar, seem like the perfect choice? The truth is that it just
confuses our body because artificial sweeteners have more intense flavor than real sugar,
so over time products like diet Coke dull our senses to naturally sweet foods. Even more
it has been proven in different studies that artificial sweeteners trigger the insulin
response, which over time makes the body resistant to natural sugars. As a result, our
body is not capable of processing the sugar and it becomes fat (Yang, Qing.
"Abstract." National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of
Medicine, 29 Nov. 0005. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.). A dulled insulin response and
overabundance of sugars can also lead to type two diabetes, which can be the beginning
of several serious health problems. Furthermore, it is well-known that obesity is
becoming a greater problem from day to day, especially in the USA. Thus, the creators of
Coca Cola used peoples weaknesses to sell the product while forgetting to inform the
public of the consequences. Drinking Coke Zero to enjoy Coke without consequences
does not truly mean without consequences. The Coca Cola Company would have you
believe differently. The athlete that is holding Coke has very well defined muscles and
hardly any body fat. For persuadable people it seems easy to follow his example and
believe that it will help them stay fit.

Using football players is not the only strategy that Coca Cola Company
implements to attract people. On their billboards you can see women in bikinis showing

their perfect bodies, superheroes and even James Bond. Phrases like wild health, zero
drama and zero problems are unavoidable. So, children are not the only ones that are
being deceived.

Young girls are on target too. In todays society being skinny is something that
preoccupies them their minds the most. So, most of them would neglect warnings given
by adults and enjoying Coca Cola Zero in order hoping to be as skinny as models on
commercials.

We dont need to read a lot of scholarly books or be particularly smart to understand how
harmful Coke Zero is for our health. It is enough to look at the label and see its
ingredients. First of all, aspartame, popular sweetener, is made of aspartic acid,
phenylalanine, methanol, and formaldehyde. In 2001, Dr. H. J. Roberts published the
book "Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic in which he talks about psychiatric
reactions, such as headache, confusion, and depression, to aspartame products. He also
describes it as the probable cause of acceleration of Alzheimer disease. "Physicians must
question all patients with the foregoing complaints and other unexplained problems about
aspartame use. If these products are being consumed, a brief trial of abstinence should be
recommended before embarking upon expensive test, multiple consultations, and various
risky interventions. he said (Roberts, H. J. Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic.
New York City: Sunshine Sentinel Pr Inc, 2001. Print.). He demonstrated his claim by
giving us several examples of people who suffered from serious diseases after using
aspartame in large amounts. Soreness of the jaw and neck, rash, depression and seizures
are just some of problems that they experienced. Some scientists criticized his book
because aspartame is proclaimed by FDA to be safe, but Dr. Roberts thinks that it was
expectable because it brings lot of money to the USA. The fact that people have been
drinking much more soda ever since Diet Soda was invented is astonishing and
concerning. Dr. Roberts is not the only one who thinks that publishing and health
professionals must be aware of adverse effects of aspartame and very cautious while
using it. Dr. John Olney, a medical doctor and a professor of psychiatry, pathology, and
immunology at the Washington University School of Medicine, connected it with a raise
in brain tumor rates in the last few decades. Although he couldn't prove his hypotheses,

he argued that evidence that is linking aspartame with tumor is greater that for other
factors such as ionizing radiation, electromagnetic fields, smoke inhalation, pesticides
and various industrial chemicals. Also Yale Journal of Biology and medicine published
the results of The San Antonio Heart Study survey (Yale Journal Of Biology and
Medicine 83.2 (2010): 101-108. NCBI. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.). They found out that
aspartame may actually contribute to weight gain. The problem is that artificial
sweeteners, precisely because they are sweet, encourage sugar craving and sugar
dependence. That supports the fact that Coca Cola Company increased their profit
significantly after lunching free-sugar products. So it seems that the arguments of people
who are trying to lose weight substituting regular Coke with Coca Cola Zero
are fallacious. That is probably why health and obesity are the biggest problems in
America, because powerful people deceive others, using their weaknesses to earn money.

Another issue is that people have lost the habit of sacrificing anything. New
era commercials make us believe that we can have everything. Just as you can enjoy
different versions of milk and meat while you are fasting, you can eat sweets and lose
weight at the same time. But, in the end, what is the point of all that? Considering how
much our lives have become facilitated over the last decade, I am pretty worried about
what will happen in the future. Growing with these ideas that commercials are exposing,
children will probably become even more selfish and spoiled.

After doing all this research and finding out more about Coca Cola Zero I
believe that I am never going to be able to drink it again and I would encourage other
people to give it up too. There is no beverage that is worth of posing ourselves to such a

big health risk. If you do not believe me try to learn something about Coke Zero on your
own. I am sure you are going to think twice next time when you want to grab a glass of it.