Coke steps up to the political mainframe

In September's edition of Private Eye, the magazine gave uncovered the latest debacle in the circus that is the House of Commons, whereupon Coca-Cola, longtime fighter of injustice paid for a meeting on 'corporate social responsibility'. This comes as a slight shock seeing as the Coca-Cola Company, which is as we all know a corporation, has had a long and checkered history when it comes to the social welfare of their employees and clients. After all, there is no trace of any health warnings on the Coke website as to the adverse effects of excessive consumption of their product, which includes high traces of caffeine and sugar, not to mention a massive variety of artificial colourings and flavours pumped into their soft drink. The caffeine in Coca Cola, when consumed excessively is thought possible to lead to caffeine dependancy for the consumer. This is further exacerbated by the fact that Coke contains a few ingredients used by the "orange" drink Sunny D, which can turn the consumer yellow if they drink too much.
Of course, the company aren't trying to promote excessive consumption of the drink, are they? Kids aren't pulled in by those bright adverts where the guy puts a nickel in the vending machine, and a whole new world springs to life inside the dispenser. That's what Coke seems to think at least.
Furthermore, Nestlé sponsored a meeting concerning obesity in children. The critical Nelson might find this overly hypocritical, as Nestlé's contributions to stopping childhood obesity include the Kit Kat bar and Cookie Crisp cereal, which is essentially chocolate chip cookies in a bowl with milk poured on them. Nestlé of course are well known for having publicly opposed Labour's scheme for "traffic light" food labels, which mark the product with a green, yellow or red light depending on the ingredients used, and the amount of E-numbers and chemicals pumped into the product. They also opposed the government's plan to limit junk-food adverts on prime-time TV.
This is of course the corporation without any scruples whatsoever. We all remember the baby milk controversy of the 70's don't we? This being the controversy where their special formula allegedly caused the deaths of fifteen infants, due to the result of the formula being mixed with contaminated water. The only problem is, a lot of this information has been slow getting out to people, since Nestlé have been involved in a long number of libel court cases against people who openly opposed their breast-milk substitute using the fifteen dead children as a thorougly justifiable example of how Nestlé don't give a shit about their clientelle if their Corporate interests are in the picture.

Back to Coca-Cola, and we know that way back when a few decades ago, cocaine was an active ingredient in their drink. Having said that, this was back in the day when Cocaine was a legal substance. Nevertheless, with the high amount of sugar, caffeine and coke in the drink, it gave the user an unbeatable high, therefore the company decided to market it as a health drink. This was bullshit, and they knew it. The health drink plot was simply a way to increase consumption, therefore people would drink it more often, leading to cocaine addiction amongst a plethora of other health problems.
Again, why did all this information come out late? Because the company, like Nestlé was involved in a long series of libel cases against people who argued that the drink held no health benefits whatsoever. This has been a common caracteristic of large food and drink corporations such as Coke and Nestlé whereupon they use intimidation and the like to beat the public into submission. While the fat-man at the top floor sits and pats his stomach, knowing he's got premium health service, his employees and consumers are struggling to make money, and are falling victim to health complications, because they've been fed lies by the corporation.
And at the heart of it all, who or what do we have to blame for this? Capitalism of course. It may be the only viable economic system out there (let's not forget that Stalin and Castro aren't true representatives of Communism, a system which has never made a true apparition in the economic market), but it's destroying public interests, as it's been twisted by the corporations whose only mantra is "Make a profit and screw everything else". Pay your workers pittance, try to dodge any and all inspections that might bring an end to production and wallow in your own greed like a pig in mud.

Stay sane,

Jay