Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site peora.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!mtuxo!mtunh!mtung!mtunf!ariel!vax135!petsd!peora!jer From: jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) Newsgroups: net.misc.coke Subject: Re: Of vanilla beans and tobacco juice in old Coke Message-ID: <1375@peora.UUCP> Date: Thu, 25-Jul-85 11:01:56 EDT Article-I.D.: peora.1375 Posted: Thu Jul 25 11:01:56 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 27-Jul-85 01:36:31 EDT References: <1054@ames.UUCP> Organization: Perkin-Elmer SDC, Orlando, Fl. Lines: 54 > Probably recycling an oldie here, but I understand that the "active > ingredient" of Coca Cola is NICOTINE, supplied via tobacco juice, and thus > categorizable as a "natural flavoring." It would be a lot easier to guess the "11 Herbs and Spices" in Kentucky Fried Chicken than to guess the ingredients in Coke, since at least you know how many are in KFC. In the recent issue of Scientific American that contained an article on cocaine, it stated that at the time of that article Coca Cola contained an extract of coca leaves (an extract other than cocaine, of course). It surprised me that this was stated as fact, with no doubt implied, but SA is a very objective publication, in general, and thus I tend to belive it. So far, all the ingredients that have been discovered to be in Coca Cola have one thing in common -- which is obvious if you think about it, but otherwise isn't. Specifically: if Coke contains a Coca leaf extract, a Cola nut extract, Vanilla, and lemon ... well, these are all very common, "down home" ingredients of the late 1800s. And this leads one to think a little more... Coke's original formula (which almost certainly has been revised since this happened, but probably only to eliminate ingredients that were discovered to be pharmacologically risky to use) was developed by an apothecary. Well, it probably was made from common items in an apothecary shop of the period, because what's in common with all the above ingredients is that I can remember seeing them in the museum at the pharmacy school where my father taught when I was growing up, in which they indeed had every common item an apothecary of the period had (because it was used in a course on old-fashioned apothecary methods, which I think is called "pharmacognocy" (I don't know how to spell it).) The point of this: a good heuristic for guessing Coca Cola ingredients would be to (a) identify items of the above types that are now known not to have harmful side effects, and are appetizing [many of the items were things like a kind of green winged bug, castor beans, frankincense, myrrh, beeswax, various types of mustard seeds, gelatin, etc, as well as many kinds of seeds now known to have bad side effects], or (b) given an hypothesis obtained by a method other than (a) that some item is in the product, see if it was common in an apothecary shop of the period. Tobacco leaves may fit (b) (though they definitely were not in the museum I knew, in which I spent many hours as a child), but they almost certainly violate (a), since nicotine is known to have significant side effects. You could also test the hypothesis on a smoker (one who smoked relatively few cigarettes per day), by seeing whether or not coke satisfied his or her craving for nicotine. (This wouldn't be a good test in itself, since the caffeine, etc. might also influence it... I am not sure; also, if it didn't work, your test smoker would be climbing the walls with frustration trying to get a cigarette... :-)) -- Shyy-Anzr: J. Eric Roskos UUCP: ..!{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!vax135!petsd!peora!jer US Mail: MS 795; Perkin-Elmer SDC; 2486 Sand Lake Road, Orlando, FL 32809-7642