The Civic Platform - A Political Journal of Ideas and Analysis

Africans purchase 36 billion bottles of Coke a year, at a price of 20-30 American cents per bottle. Since the price is so low, and because Coca-Cola analyzes sales so closely, the Coke bottle has actually become a reliable tracker of stability and prosperity in Africa.

For example, the ups and downs during Kenya’s post-election violence
this year could be traced in sales of Coke in Nairobi’s slums and in
western Kenya’s villages.

Coca-Cola is the largest private-sector employer in Africa. A study
has suggested that 1 percent of South Africa’s economy is in some way
related to the distribution and sale of Coke.

The company expects sales in Africa to grow by an annual 10 to 13
percent over the next few years, outstripping economic growth.
Sources:
The Economist July 3, 2008

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:
When violence breaks out in Africa, Coke sales go down. When things
are more prosperous, their sales go up. That Coca-Cola has become a
bellwether on a continent that is home to millions of starving people
is unsettling, to say the least.

Yet, Coca-Cola boasts that they are the largest private-sector
employer in Africa. And they’ve just invested $50 million in a new
bottling plant, and another $10 million in new offices, for the
region. Isn’t this a positive thing for the struggling economy?

For some reason, a wolf in sheep’s clothing comes to mind.

Coca-Cola and other bottling plants like Pepsi are well known for
running water wells dry and contaminating whatever water is left.
Some of the plants draw from 800,000 to 1.5 million liters of water
from common groundwater resources daily. Other water is supplied to
Coca-Cola via water trucks that extract water from neighboring
villages.

Meanwhile, the average wage in many parts of Africa is less than $1 a
day, and this family from Chad spent just $1.23 on food to feed their
family for a week. So 20-30 cents for a Coke is not so cheap after
all.

Infiltrating Africa with Coke — “Its system of distribution, which
moves the sugary drink from bottling plants deep into slums and the
bush a few crates at a time,” according to the Economist — is the
goal for Coca-Cola’s marketers, but really does the world need more
soda plants?

Soda: The World’s Favorite Beverage?

A major percentage of the world’s population already drinks soda, but
perhaps nowhere are the perils of this behavior more obvious than in
the United States.

As of 2005, white bread was dethroned as the number one source of
calories in the American diet, being replaced by soft drinks. During
the past half-century, the number of carbonated soft-drink drinkers
rose more than 450 percent and jumped from 11 gallons in 1946 to 49
gallons in the year 2000. Currently, the average American drinks more
than 60 gallons of soft drinks each year.

During this time, obesity rates have skyrocketed. An epidemic of
children are coming down with “adult” diabetes. And kids are being
diagnosed with behavioral problems like ADHD at alarming rates.

How could there NOT be a connection?

One can of Coke contains 10 teaspoons of sugar. This is 100 percent
of your recommended daily intake (which is way too high in my opinion
anyway). The only reason you don’t vomit as a result of the
overwhelming sweetness is because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor.

Soon after downing even one of these sickeningly sweet beverages,
your blood sugar spikes, and your liver responds to the resulting
insulin burst by turning massive amounts of sugar into fat.

So for people in Africa to see Coke as a good thing is a very sad
reality. If it becomes as popular there as it has in much of the rest
of the world, they are in for the same consequences that are right
now occurring in the United States.

Drinking soda is one American tradition that definitely should not be
shared with the rest of the world. But I doubt Coca-Cola will ever
see it that way.

http://articles. mercola.com/ sites/articles/ archive/2008/ 07/26/the- new-
tragic-measure- of-true-happines s-in-africa. aspx?source= nl

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