Tessa - Blog 3

Dear James Quincey,

            My name is Tessa Pieretti, I am a student here at the University of Nevada, Reno and I would like to bring to your attention all of the things wrong with one of your products, Diet Coke. Personally, I do not like soda because I think it has a gross taste and has far too much sugar in it, which brings me to my main point. Diet coke is nowhere near being considered “diet”. Unfortunately, so many people drink it because they actually believe it is good for them or healthy in a way. Although diet sodas do not have any regular sugar in them, they are full of artificial sugars which may be even worse. Some of these artificial sugars include aspartame, saccharin, sucralose or an herbal sweetener like Stevia, which are 200–13,000 times sweeter than regular sugar. Just this small part shows how bad it is for people. It is common sense to know that an artificial sugar that is 200-13,00 times sweeter than regular sugar is horrible for everyone’s overall health. The fact that it isn’t regular sugar just proves how many different ingredients you have to add to it to make it taste good, which makes it even more unhealthy. Now even though people know about the artificial sweeteners, we still don’t really know what exactly those are even made of, which is kind of scary to me. Not only does it have an excessive amount of artificial sugar, but it contains a lot of caffeine as well. Most people start drinking diet soda because it is supposed to have little to no caffeine in it, and they want to be healthier, but here you are serving diet coke with a lot of caffeine. The worst part of diet coke, is that it can increase your risk of a heart attack, as can any other soda. Action needs to be taken on this issue to help fix it. Because you are the CEO of Coca-Cola, I was hoping to propose a solution to this issue. Now the main issue is all the preservatives and artificial flavors. Obviously, we can’t take out the carbonated water or syrup, but we can add natural flavors instead of artificial ones. There are many different fruits, herbs, extracts, spices, etc. to use in soda. For example, lemon, oranges, pineapple, vanilla, almond, ginger, berries, mint, basil, lime. There is an endless amount on other ingredients that would make it so much healthier and it would be an actual Diet Coke. Another thing that may contribute to it, is not putting it in the aluminum cans. You should use a more eco friendly and biodegradable element than cans. It would be better for the environment and everyone living in it to use an alternative. I truly believe that if you use these precautions and you actually start to research different ways to do things to help everyone who drinks your products, you will be more successful. There would not be so much controversy around you and your company and the products that you guys sell.

Thank you for your time,

            Tessa Pieretti