Comments on: Coca Cola’s vitaminwater lawsuit defense: “reasonable people know we’re liars.”

By: Wayne Dyer

Wayne Dyer — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 01:14:00 +0000

Almost bought one yesterday, but opted for bottled water instead.

By: L_Mariachi

L_Mariachi — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 02:38:00 +0000

If you’d followed the link you would have seen: vitamins A, B-complex, C, E, potassium, magnesium, zinc, some trace minerals, taurine (the amino acid,) and choline, plus a couple other things. Not all of them are in every flavor.

Of course it’s not as good for you than a multivitamin washed down with a kale-carrot-ginger smoothie, but it beats the hell out of starting your day with a Diet Coke or venti caramel latte.

By: Cowicide

Cowicide — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:09:00 +0000

Further confirmation that many corporations are simply psychopathic "people".

By: retchdog

retchdog — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:48:00 +0000

vit-C doesn’t count since that’s a souring agent anyway, unless you’re really worried about scurvy and don’t eat anything but hardtack.

i have no idea what amino acids you’re referring to.

sugar? lol.

that leaves potassium and a b-complex. just drink something else and take a multivitamin.

By: dethbird

dethbird — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:46:00 +0000

Give all of Coca Cola’s profits to me. Straight into my checking account. Any reasonably corporation (who are people too) knows I need some straight cold cash mufucka!

By: p0wn

p0wn — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:20:00 +0000

Pretty sure it doesn’t have significant amounts of anything but sugar and water in there.

By: Graham Martin

Graham Martin — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 19:44:00 +0000

This is over three years old. Any reason we are bringing it up again?

By: Arys

Arys — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 18:34:00 +0000

Anyone else remember the Frederick Pohl sci-fi book The Space Merchents?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants

By: Josh Bisker

Josh Bisker — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 16:51:00 +0000

That is HILARIOUS.

By: Brad Bell

Brad Bell — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 10:26:00 +0000

I feel we can make anything acceptable if we talk about it enough. I find this weird and troubling. Coke. HSBC. 0dark30. ”Of course, advertising is lying! Of course, laundering Al Queda’s money is okay for banks (we are not citizens)! Of course, torture is an unpleasant necessity in this day and age! “ Coke’s lawyers are trolls. Someone will always empathise with the troll. A discussion inevitably breaks out. Next week a corporation will admit it murdered it’s employees – but it’s okay because we are regressing into a natural, neo-feudal phase where such things routinely happen.

If you read the ingredients and compare, it is usually shocking. Key insight: most of everything is water. Drinks are mostly water. And fresh food is pumped full of water by injection or osmosis. Mostly everybody is in the water business, which is mostly about advertising and packaging. The good news: there is usually one non-scam product: generic Apple Juice may “contain 10% real juice” but another product will be 100% juice squeezed from apples.” (However, keep in mind, “apple juice” does not mean juice from an apple. It refers instead to the product category, not the juice. Therefore the big print may say, “Apple Juice” and the small print will say, “contains 10% real juice.” (George Orwell makes me feel happy and sane. He was a marketing guru.))

By: L_Mariachi

L_Mariachi — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 06:23:00 +0000

Unless your tap water comes with significant amounts of B- and C vitamins, potassium, caffeine, amino acids, sugar, etc., you are the uneducated (non-)consumer. Regardless of the merits (or lack thereof) of the product, calling it tap water with food coloring is just plain false.

By: s2redux

s2redux — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 05:49:00 +0000

I agree it would be great for Dean to add a year to the bylines, but all is not lost in the meantime — the year always appears as part of the article URL.

By: benher

benher — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 05:05:00 +0000

There’s so much disinformation surrounding any sort of “health” or “vitamin” anything it’s a wonder any one of us could ever dream to be the proverbial “Conscious Consumer” ™

I always used to wonder about my ol’ favorite classic 70s green Gator-aid.
Fucking Electrolytes – how do they work?!

By: benher

benher — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 05:03:00 +0000

All I can say is that settling for (and paying for) a couple drops of food coloring added to a liquid that we can get out of our faucet makes us look like pretty uneducated consumers.

By: chris jimson

chris jimson — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 02:48:00 +0000

All I know is that some flavors of VitaminWater give me diarrhea– no joke. A friend confirmed that he too had experienced this. So. . . maybe they should tout that as one of its benefits and put Ex-Lax out of business.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 02:07:00 +0000

So it’s liquid Airborne?

By: danegeld

danegeld — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 01:20:00 +0000

yeah I purchased VitaminWater once on a whim and it’s far too sweet. In the UK it’s sold as a ~600mL bottle, with a little badge saying that “a 200mL serving supplies 9% of your RDA of sugar”; whereas you’re clearly going to drink the whole bottle in one go, so it contains more like a third of your daily sugar allowance. Why do CocaCola make their product so high in sugar? You’d think they could actually change the formulation fairly easily.

By: Petzl

Petzl — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 01:15:00 +0000

Keep us updated.

By: Petzl

Petzl — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 01:12:00 +0000

Except reasonable people aren’t the customers who buy their product.

Still it takes gargantuan balls of unalloyed unobtainium to make this claim in open court without smirking.

By: L_Mariachi

L_Mariachi — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 01:01:00 +0000

Just because it has sugar in it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t also have the vitamins listed. If the suit centers on the creative writing blurbs on the back of the bottles… I just read every one of them and none make any health claims beyond “supports your immune system with zinc and B6” or “87mg of caffeine to support mental focus.” Unless zinc doesn’t support one’s immune system or caffeine isn’t a stimulant, there are no unwarranted health claims there.

By: Wayne Dyer

Wayne Dyer — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 23:12:00 +0000

I’ve been known to buy VitaminWater from time to time. Generally the stevia-sporting variety. It’s flavored, sugared or non-sugar-sweetened water. Like Kool-Aid. I know what I’m buying. I’d say I have maybe one a week.

By: Rob

Rob — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 22:41:00 +0000

Remember, you’re talking about a country where a political party has “don’t teach critical thinking” as one of the planks of its platform.

By: ojisan

ojisan — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 22:38:00 +0000

I don’t believe you.

By: Lemoutan

Lemoutan — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 22:18:00 +0000

Other than publicly acknowledge that most of us are complicit in the crap we settle for, there ain’t much anyone can say.

By: jimh

jimh — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 22:05:00 +0000

You mean Coke doesn’t add life?!!

By: Rob

Rob — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 21:56:00 +0000

I’m going to guess 0. Anyone that could probably wouldn’t be drinking it.

By: jellyfibs

jellyfibs — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 21:51:00 +0000

It’s actually listed as “reverse osmosis water” on the label. What percentage of the consumers of VitaminWater can explain what that means?

By: Rob

Rob — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 21:51:00 +0000

Natural? Nothing natural has this list of issues.
http://www.dhmo.org/

/pulls tongue out of cheek

By: Tadas Jelinek

Tadas Jelinek — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 21:43:00 +0000

“Pure natural dihydrogen monoxide”

By: jellyfibs

jellyfibs — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 21:30:00 +0000

I feel like it’s a bit more subtle than that though. If you were to present someone with a VitaminWater ad with a series of questions about the product to answer with the ad as an aid, they might actually get some correct. Others, I’m pretty sure many people would get wrong if they didn’t have other experience with the product or study the label very closely and possibly do extra research to understand the ingredients better.

Example questions for a VitaminWater ad:
-Is this product a beverage that is ready to drink or does the customer need to prepare it in some manner?
-What is the primary ingredient in this product?
-What is the secondary ingredient in this product?
-Does this product have any additional ingredients? If so, what are they?
-Is this product carbonated?
-Is this product sweet? Savory? Salty? Does it have any other flavor?
-Where does the color in this product come from?
-How many calories are in a serving of this product?
-Does this beverage have any other purpose besides hydration?
-Provide 3 adjectives to describe the primary audience of this product.
-Would your doctor recommend you drink this product?

Which is to say, their marketing isn’t 100% a lie, but they are admitting it isn’t 100% truthful facts either. So somewhere between the land of truth and the land of lies is actually where their marketing message falls. How do you draw that line between truth and lie and also make sure people understand where it is?