By now you’ve heard that Coca Cola is being used as a pesticide in India, can clean a toilet, and even is handy as a rust remover, but exploration regarding its acid advantage hasn’t gone beyond room temperature – until now. If you needed one more reason to ditch soda, it’s demonstrated in the video below, which shows a soft drink being heated until much of its water evaporates.
About those uses: the cleaning tricks rely on cola’s phosphoric acid, which is mild enough to drink in a soft drink. The pesticide story dates from 2004, when farmers in Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were reported to be spraying cola on cotton and chilli crops; an agricultural specialist suggested the sugar attracted red ants that ate insect larvae, while both Coca-Cola and Pepsi said the drinks were useless as pesticides. (The original report: John Vidal, “Things grow better with Coke”, The Guardian, 9 November 2004, reprinted by Countercurrents, which quotes the agriculture analyst Devinder Sharma on sugary sprays attracting red ants, and a Coca-Cola spokesman saying there was “no scientific basis” for the practice.)
It’s unfortunate that such a drink is more abundantly dispersed than water in Mexico, but that’s what happens when corporate greed overtakes public health concern. (Fun fact: did you know the previous president of Coca Cola became Mexico’s president of the Republic in 2000? Point given.)
Correction and context: Vicente Fox, who became President of Mexico on 1 December 2000, had been president and chief executive of Coca-Cola Mexico, the company’s Mexican operation, in the 1970s, not head of the global company; he left in 1979. (See also Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Vicente Fox”, which notes that he became the company’s chief executive in Mexico, later headed its Latin American operations, resigned in 1979, and succeeded Ernesto Zedillo as president on 1 December 2000.) The claim that soda is more available than water in Mexico comes from a 2013 opinion piece and is not a measured national statistic. What is measurable is Mexico’s response: a tax of 1 peso per litre on sugar-sweetened drinks, introduced in January 2014, cut purchases of taxed drinks by about 6% on average in its first year and by about 12% by December, while purchases of untaxed drinks, mainly bottled water, rose by about 4%.
CrazyRussianHacker made this video to prove a point, but unless every individual chooses to abstain from sugary, highly processed, and acidic drinks, little to no change will happen on a collective scale. Individual action is where it begins, however, and choice to remain healthy and connected begins in the home. Be the example, and ditch the soda once and for all. If you need more persuasion, check out this link detailing the many health problems soda (coke) contributes to.
Sources: True Activist, Elite Daily
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Evaporation changes what remains in the pan
A boiling-soda video concentrates a drink as water is removed. The resulting appearance does not reproduce digestion or independently measure health effects. A nutritional comparison needs serving size and composition, not simply a striking residue. Claims about pesticide use or national water access require separate evidence and cannot be established by the demonstration.
Boiling a drink removes water and changes the concentration and appearance of what remains. The residue can make dissolved ingredients easier to notice, but it does not recreate what happens after someone drinks the liquid. The experiment’s heat and duration are part of the demonstration, not a model of the body.
For a meaningful comparison, use the same starting volume and the same endpoint for each sample. Otherwise a larger residue may simply reflect more liquid at the start or less evaporation. A video that shows one drink in isolation cannot establish how its result compares with every alternative.
The nutrition label answers a different question more directly: how much sugar is listed in a stated serving? Keep the serving size beside the figure, especially when a bottle contains more than one serving. That allows a reader to compare quantities without relying on the colour or texture of a heated mixture.
The original commentary also moves from the kitchen demonstration to corporate influence and public health. Those are legitimate subjects for separate reporting, but the boiling experiment does not prove claims about water access, political responsibility or the effects of a whole dietary pattern. Each conclusion needs evidence suited to the question being asked.
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