Free Republic

Diet Coke turns 30 this year, and despite health concerns and an rocky advertising trajectory (remember Paula Abdul dancing with dead celebrities?), the Thank-God-It's-Not-Sugar-But-Hopefully-Aspartame-Won't-Kill-You beverage is doing better than ever. Diet Coke has held the title of second most popular soda in the world (after regular Coke) for two years running — 40% of colas currently sold are either Diet Coke or Coke Zero — and it seems like more people are now drinking it for the taste instead of as a diet aid. But it wasn't always this way. When Diet Coke was introduced in 1982, "it was too...

Daytona Beach .. 400 miles .. 43 drivers .. Nascar shrank the air hole and changed the thermostats to make tandem racing less of an issue. We'll see..

Coca Cola and union members from Teamster Local 1035 have reached an agreement putting an end to a six-week strike. Union workers voted and passed a six-year agreement that includes annual wage increases and additional company contributions to employee retirement plans. The agreement also provides shared responsibility for healthcare costs through employee contributions, Coca Cola said in a statement released Thursday night. Workers will be returning back to the job on Monday morning.

An ongoing strike at the Coca-Cola bottling facility in East Hartford is now extending its grip to Stop & Shop supermarkets. Workers said they plan to picket the supermarkets because they said they usually stock Coca-Cola products on store shelves. But picketing workers said that Stop & Shop employees are now doing the jobs of the workers on strike. They are asking other unionized workers to not deliver to the supermarket chain. Coca-Cola workers went on strike two weeks ago after co0ntract negotiations broke down.

Both the Teamsters and Coca-Cola agree that health insurance costs $14,898 a year per employee at the East Hartford bottling plant. But the two sides don't agree how that cost is distributed, making it hard to see how they can reach a new contract where health insurance costs are a major sticking point. About 350 union members have been striking for two weeks after about seven months of negotiating. Teamsters, who work as drivers, in soda bottling operations and in the warehouse, make about $20 an hour, and their health insurance costs another $7.16 an hour. In the last contract,...

I know I know.. ya already plan to eat and drink enough this week-end to sustain a small squad of recons a month in the bushes.. and the latest news on nascar and its green 'bent' of late probably grates ya like crazy Don't forget to budget in the 600 miler after the Indy 500.. run at King JJ's home track no less. It should be a real feast, a smorgasboard of action.. if we're lucky. ;-]

Workers represented by Teamsters Local 1035 went on strike Wednesday at 5 p.m. the Coca-Cola bottling plant on 471 Main St. There are 357 workers on strike, including drivers, warehouse and bottling workers. "It's corporate greed at its worst," said Chris Roos, secretary-treasurer for Local 1035. Health benefits, pay raises and job security are all sticking points, he said. The men and women on the picket line wore T-shirts that said: "Coca-Cola give it back: $2.65." Roos said, "We've taken $2.65 less in wages over the last five years," and said the company now wants employees to do cost sharing...

A pathologist said Natasha Harris's Coca-Cola habit probably contributed to her death in 2010. Photograph: AP Natasha Harris, 30, of Invercargill, died from a heart attack in February 2010. Dr Dan Mornin testified at an inquest on Thursday that Harris probably suffered from hypokalemia, or low potassium, which he thinks was caused by her excessive consumption of Coke and overall poor nutrition. Mornin said toxic levels of caffeine, a stimulant found in cola, also may have contributed to her death. Harris's partner, Chris Hodgkinson, testified that Harris drank between 8 and 10 litres of Coke every day. "She was addicted...

Let’s stipulate: Activists on the left are free to exercise their rights of speech and assembly to boycott businesses whose politics they oppose. Conversely, activists on the right are free to exercise the power of their pocketbooks and refrain from supporting businesses that shun their values. So, what are you waiting for, conservatives? There are coordinated shakedowns taking place right now that involve some of America’s most prominent companies who’ve chosen to surrender to progressive bullying and race-card opportunism. Silence is complicity. On Tuesday, McDonald’s told liberal magazine Mother Jones that the company had “decided to cut ties with ALEC,...

ORLANDO, Fla./NEW YORK (Reuters) - Coca-Cola Co is dropping its membership in a conservative national advocacy group that supports "Stand Your Ground" laws such as the one being used as a defense in the Florida killing of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin. The move by the world's biggest soft drink maker comes as corporate America faces increased scrutiny from consumers and shareholder activists over lobbying and political spending.

Recently NLPC has reported about Coca-Cola’s holiday ad campaign to protect polar bears with donations up to $3 million to the World Wildlife Fund, which was a barely disguised effort to fund environmental pressure groups’ fraudulent global warming fight . But Coke’s passion to avert climate catastrophism runs deeper than the Arctic ice. The company even has a position statement that says “the consensus on climate science is increasingly unequivocal,” that “global climate change is happening” (everyone agrees with that – it always has changed and always will), and that “man-made greenhouse gas emissions are a crucial factor.” “Across...

Coca-Cola ’s just-announced holiday campaign to supposedly protect Arctic polar bear habitat – highlighted by the company changing its iconic red cans to white – is ending, with the company killing off its new packaging two months earlier than planned. No, Coke hasn’t seen the light on its disguised support for the global warming hoax . The images of polar bears will instead appear on redesigned red cans, after many consumers mistakenly grabbed the white cans believing they were selecting the silver-canned Diet Coke. For example, the Wall Street Journal reported that in recent days about a half-dozen customers...

Last month NLPC reported that during the holidays Coca-Cola will change its traditional red cans to white as part of an advertising campaign to raise $2 million for the World Wildlife Fund’s “polar bear conservation efforts.” This despite the fact that global polar bear populations are healthy ( much larger than 50 years ago ), their Arctic habitat is recovering, and the locations where a few of their numbers have declined in some cases are attributed to too much ice, not “global warming.” Since polar bears are not endangered, it’s worthwhile to investigate what WWF activities the Coke money...

For years Coca-Cola has given millions of dollars to eco-extreme group World Wildlife Fund, whose alarmism and perpetration of falsehoods are unmatched among its cohorts in climate activism. Now Coke has initiated a new campaign with WWF that features its iconic advertising species in an effort to drive more funding to the international nonprofit group to “protect the polar bears’ Arctic home.” The promotion will include new packaging for Coke over the holiday season, changing its familiar red cans to white, and featuring an image of a mother polar bear and her cubs on the side. Coke says it...

Who says American companies aren't investing? They are. Billions, in fact. Only, they are just not investing here in the U.S. Atlanta based Coca-Cola (KO) plans to invest $4 billion in China, the company's CEO Muhtar Kent told reporters in Shanghai this week. It's the company's biggest planned investment in China since the 2009 investment of $2 billion. The investments will start next year and is part of the company's China capex until 2014. Kent said the company is even considering listing its shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, adding itself to the list of mainstream brands listing their depositary...

SNIPPET: "There are some good reasons for allowing at least a few jihadi forums to operate." SNIPPET: "However, there are limits to our ability to exploit all the intelligence opportunities a forum may present. To put it another way, jihadi forums contribute to future terrorism in ways that are unpredictable and/or beyond our ability to control. This would be the view held by those other government agencies who prefer to seek out and destroy forums and to take down forum activists. For my part, I can live with keeping online those forums we have sufficient access to monitor and resources...

TOKYO -- The Coca-Cola Company announced today that it is establishing the Coca-Cola Japan Reconstruction Fund and raised its pledge to a total of 2.5 billion Yen (US$31 million) donations towards relief and rebuilding efforts for the victims of the Japan earthquake and tsunami over the next three years. This includes the 600 million Yen (US$7.3 million) in cash and product announced previously. The commitment was made following a two-day visit to Tokyo by Muhtar Kent, Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company. Mr. Kent was accompanied on the trip by Company Directors Herbert A. Allen, a member of the...

U.S. sales of Diet Coke overtook those of Pepsi-Cola for the first time in 2010, making the diet soda the No. 2 carbonated soft drink in the country behind Coca-Cola, industry data are expected to confirm Thursday. Occupying the top two rankings would mark a historic win for Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO - News) in its decades-old rivalry with PepsiCo Inc. (NYSE: PEP - News), which has seen its market share slip in recent years and is trying to retool its marketing.

A major consumer group today called for a government ban on two types of caramel coloring used in colas, warning that the ingredients could cause cancer. The soft drink industry came out swinging, strongly objecting to the claim.

In December 2009, there was a thread here on Free Republic outlining the fact that Coca-Cola had released "holiday" packaging that said "Feliz Navidad" in Spanish, but "Holiday 2009" in English. Some were outraged because it appeared that Christmas was okay to acknowledge in Spanish, but not in English. It seems that Coke has learned their lesson and for their 2010 packaging, they use the English greeting "Merry Christmas". Click here to read the original 2009 Free Republic article on this matter. Click here to see an image containing both the 2009 and 2010 Coke package designs with the "Holiday...