COCA-COLA DENIES CANCER CLAIM

Coca-Cola Sabco, the Mozambican branch of the Coca-Cola company, has denied that there is any chance that its soft drinks can cause cancer.  The company’s denial, issued on Monday, comes after the Washington-based Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) warned that one of the flavourings used, by both Coca-Cola and its rival Pepsi-Cola, is a carcinogen.   The ingredient concerned is the caramel flavouring 4-methylimidazole (4-MEL), which researchers claim could be linked to cancer in mice and rats. This was sufficient for the state of California to declare 4-MEL a carcinogen – even though small amounts of this flavouring are found in many foods and drinks.  The Coca-Cola Sabco release protested that the scare was based on just one laboratory study undertaken on rodents, and that to obtain the minimum dose that the rats received in the study a human would have to drink more than 2,900 cans of Coke every day for 70 years.   Nonetheless, both Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola are altering the composition of the drinks they sell in the United States so that they will contain less 4-MEL. This is because, under California law, foodstuffs with above a certain level of substances declared carcinogenic must carry a cancer-warning label.   CSPI found that the cans of Coke and Pepsi it sampled contained between 103 and 153 micrograms of 4-MEL. The California cancer warning label would be obligatory on cans with above 29 micrograms of the substance.   To avoid such a label, which might affect sales, both soft drinks companies are reducing the amount of 4-MEL in their drinks, even though they insist there is no cancer risk.   A Coca-Cola representative in South Africa, Zipporah Maubane, told reporters that the same move would also be taken with the dinks made in South Africa. But there are no plans, so far, to change the composition of the drinks sold in Europe.  Of course, the real health risk from Coca-Cola and similar drinks has nothing to do with tiny amounts of debatable carcinogens, but from the undoubted presence of large amounts of sugar. For instance, a one litre bottle of Coke contains 108 grams of sugar, more than 11 per cent of the total weight of the drink. That sugar provides 400 calories.  No health authority doubts that excessive sugar consumption is a major component in the current obesity epidemic in the United States. Worried that the habit of slurping sugar filled soft drinks is dangerously expanding the nation’s waistline, some concerned American politicians have advocated additional taxes on such drinks. But the proposed taxes have failed in 30 US states – defeated by a massive lobbying effort from Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, and the American Beverage Association, which have spent around 70 million dollars since early 2009 on their lobbying efforts.  Mozambique’s Minister of Industry and Trade, Armando Inroga, told the independent daily “O Pais” that on Tuesday Coca-Cola Sabco will meet with a team from his ministry to discuss what measures the company is taking in light of the CSPI findings.   He pointed out that if Mozambican laboratory examinations find that Coca-Cola products are damaging to human health, then they can be withdrawn from circulation.