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NEW YORK (AP) — PepsiCo says it's dropping aspartame from Diet Pepsi in response to customer feedback and replacing it with sucralose, another artificial sweetener commonly known as Splenda. The decision to swap sweeteners comes as Americans keep turning away from popular diet sodas. Competitor Coca-Cola said this week that sales volume for Diet Coke, which also uses aspartame, fell 5 percent in North America in the first three months of the year. Executives at Coke and Pepsi blame the declines on perceptions that aspartame isn't safe. That's even though the Food and Drug Administration says aspartame, best known by...

Harry Reid is doubling down on his attacks on the Koch Brothers as the fount of all evil. . . . So here's an idea (shamelessly stolen from a poster on "Chicks On The Right". . .) When Reid is officially fired in January, we need to hold some kind of "Salute to Harry Reid." For his relentless attack on the Koch brothers, we'll call it "A Coke for Reid" day, in which everyone pours themselves a glass of Koch, errr, Coke, raises there glass, and drinks to Harry Reid's retirement. This could be as much fun as the icebucket...

Drink a 20-ounce soda daily, and you may be causing your cells to age as much as they would if you smoked, a study suggests. Researchers investigated DNA from 5,309 adults, focusing on telomeres, the caps on the ends of our cells' chromosomes, Time reports.

The progressive War on Soda may have failed in New York, despite the best efforts of the Deplorable Nanny State Mayor, but this is a multi-front battle which will clearly rage on for some time. As any good battle commander will tell you, when fighting an opponent with numerical superiority, it’s best to drag them into a skirmish on your home turf. In the effort to save people from their own ignorant, evil selves, the fight to make soda more expensive – and thereby modify public behavior through tax policy – has moved to Berkeley.

Joe Biden’s son was booted from the military after failing a drug test, it was revealed Thursday. Hunter Biden, the youngest son of the vice president, was discharged from the Navy Reserve in February after he tested positive for cocaine, the Navy said. Hunter, a former lobbyist who works at an investment firm, had been commissioned as an ensign in the Navy Reserve, The Wall Street Journal said.

The nation's largest soda marketers -- which have been feeling the heat from health advocates -- on Tuesday pledged to reduce beverage calories consumed per person nationally by 20% by 2025. Executives from PepsiCo, Coca-Cola Co. and Dr Pepper Snapple group announced the goal in New York City at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative.

Calling all ’90s kids: Surge is back. Coca-Cola unveiled the citrus-flavored soda in 1996 as an answer to Pepsi’s Mountain Dew. But SURGE couldn’t compete and was taken off shelves in 2001, to the dismay of what had become a cult-like following. Thousands of passionate fans have been fighting for its return for years, and today they tasted victory. This is just a test, said Coca Cola spokeswoman Sheree Robinson. “It has a big fan base, however, we’re not sure how that will translate into sales,” she said.

Two Veterans Affairs Medical Center employees were arrested last week for using VA facilities to smuggle and deal cocaine, the Department of Justice recently announced. Robert Tucker and Erik Casiano had been using the U.S. Postal Service and the mailroom of a VA Medical Center in the Bronx to receive and distribute cocaine since “at least November 2013,” according to the press release. Tucker has worked for the VA since 1997, and in 2012 was promoted to supervisor of the Logistics Warehouse and Mail Center. Casiano, a pipefitter in the plumbing department, had worked for the center since 2012. All...

See, kids, this is why you don’t do drugs. And this is why you will always eventually regret voting for somebody who boasted of all the coke and dope he did while smoldering about his absentee father. President Choom Gang has demilitarized our military. He sends the Department of Health and Human Services to the Mexican border to welcome and take care of tens of thousands of illegal children streaming across. And now he wants to deploy American troops into West Africa to combat the Ebola virus. Boy, is this confusing. Mr. President, with all due respect: Are you still...

The PGA Tour has suspended Dustin Johnson for six months after he tested positive for cocaine, according to a report on Golf.com. Citing a source, Golf.com reported that Johnson has failed three drug tests -- two for cocaine (in 2014 and 2012) and one for marijuana (2009). Johnson, 30, was suspended for the 2012 failed test, Golf.com reported, but that suspension was never made public. Under its guidelines, the PGA Tour is not required to announce any disciplinary actions against players who test positive for recreational drugs. Johnson announced Thursday that he was taking a leave of absence from competition,...

Coca-Cola will have to reemploy and reimburse the 821 workers it sacked in April when it closed four of its bottling plants in Spain now that a judge has ruled the drinks multinational carried out the lay-offs unlawfully. The sudden lay-off of 1,190 (finally 821) Coca-Cola employees from its bottling plants in Madrid, Mallorca, Alicante and Asturias were, according to holding company Iberian Partners, needed to improve efficiency. But Spain’s High Court ruled on Friday that the fizzy drinks giants had not carried out the merging of all of their eight bottling plants in Spain appropriately. They also blamed them...

Coca-Cola is launching its first new drink in eight years: Coca-Cola Life. Sporting a green label, the new drink is said to contain a third less calories and sugar, according to the Daily Mail. It will be sweetened with sugar and stevia leaf extract and will only have 89 calories. Despite the reduction of sugar and the green label (because adding a green label means it’s natural), Coca-Cola Life will still contain 25 percent of the amount of sugar a person should consume in one day in just one can. Coca-Cola said this new drink is part of an initiative...

NEW YORK (AP) — Coca-Cola is taking on obesity, this time with an online video showing how fun it could be to burn off the 140 calories in a can of its soda. In the ad, the world's biggest beverage maker asks what would happen if people paid for a can of Coke by first working off the calories it contained. The ad, which notes that it typically takes 23 minutes of cycling to achieve that, shows a montage of people on a giant stationary bicycle happily trying to earn a can of its cola, with carnival music playing in...

It was only last week here in Panama that I was talking to a Pepsi truck driver from Philadelphia. They'll be coming for you sugar guys next, I said. It's already started, he retorted. In Philadelphia recently, the union bussed the drivers down to City Hall to protest a tax on sugar. Now we read that the trial lawyers are going for a repeat on the Big Tobacco shakedown of the 1990s. They want the state attorneys general to sue Big Food to "pay for soaring obesity-related health care costs." And why not? Back in the 1990s, Big Law got...

Buy this: http://www.sodastreamusa.com/

A nice affirmation of parenthood from an unexpected source.

The Center for American Progress is a left-wing organization that is closely associated with the Obama administration. Its principal product is a web site called Think Progress. Think Progress is part of the internet cesspool that modern liberalism has become. Written by hack left-wing bloggers, it is bitterly hostile to free enterprise. It is a low-rent site that traffics in the most absurd smears and conspiracy theories. Many have wondered for some years who finances far-left web sites like Think Progress. As of today, we know at least part of the answer, as CAP released its corporate donor list for...

The Coca-Cola Company isn’t smiling about the latest effort to force labels on foods and beverages that contain genetically modified organisms – this time in Washington State. It’s on a long list of manufacturers that sell products using ingredients derived from either corn or soy, both of which are nearly impossible to source in the United States without using genetically modified crops. In fact, should Washington pass its ballot initiative 522 next week, good luck finding any processed foods or beverages in an Evergreen State grocery store that don’t have GMO warning labels. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo both are on a...

Beachgoers in South America can have a cold Coke and a smile, but unlike other consumers of the world's most popular soft drink, they can drink it directly from a bottle made entirely of ice. The Atlanta-based company says the “cold to the last drop” bottles "continue to make quite a splash in Colombia and throughout the advertising world." Indeed, the cool marketing ploy, began this year, has won Coca-Cola several awards. How does it work?

(Reuters) - Arab-American groups have sharply criticized a Coca-Cola Super Bowl ad depicting an Arab walking through the desert with a camel, and one group said it would ask the beverage giant to change it before CBS airs the game on Sunday before an expected audience of more than 100 million U.S. viewers. "Why is it that Arabs are always shown as either oil-rich sheiks, terrorists, or belly dancers?" said Warren David, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, or ADC. Coca-Cola released an online teaser of the commercial last week, showing the Arab walking through a desert. He soon sees...