businessweek.com — After allegations of high levels of toxic chemicals in their subcontinental sodas, the companies face bans amid a media uproar. Welcome to the India installment of the fabled cola wars. Global soft-drink heavies Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are actually on the same side. In short, this is shaping up to be a public-relations calamity of the first order.
Aug 11, 2006 View in Crawl 4
hodyoatenAug 12, 2006
It cracks me up when people in foreign restaurants avoid the water and get sodas... and overlook the ice cubes in their drinks.
dhruvAug 12, 2006
entropy123 says : To be fair I would like to see it demonstrated that the ingredients that go into colas produced by companies native to India are significantly more pesticide free than the products of Coke and Pepsi.Reply :No native Indian cola companies are left in the market , the ones which existed have been already bought either by cocoa cola or Pepsi.
wiggles2Aug 14, 2006
Baby elephants...ha!You should go to the local Walmart where I live in Virginia- fat worthless f**ks everywhere.
Closed AccountAug 14, 2006
Could it be possible that the Indian government is fabricating the pesticide claims?Bribery is a way of life in India, from the lowliest clerk, every cop and all of the way up to the government. Maybe these claims are being made up to recapture the money spent on soft drinks so that more of it ends up in Indian hands, with the government officials involved getting a cut.If Coke & Pepsi revelead their recipies, loads of Indian companies could have made lots of money with knock offs ( with a cut paid to the government officals involved ).If not, India and the Indian government officials still win. Coke and Pepsi get banned, local soft drink and/or beverage manufactures get some major competition cleared out of their way, they make a stack of cash and again, the government officials get paid.Cola is bascially syryp water. You have to ask yourself why insecticide would be put in there or why it would find its way in there in the process of manufacturing.It is not beyond Coke or Pepsi to do something like the allegations, but after seeing how anyone in any kind of offical capacity in India operates I see this situation as one set corrupt people against another set of corrupt people.
chigzillaAug 15, 2006
Coke and Pepsi have got singled out because they are the so called "Evil MNCs" and a vulnerable target in india. Man , if the NGO ("Centre for Science and Environment") was so concerned about pollution and pesticide levels why not ban pesticides themselves? well because thay dont have the guts to face the strong farmers lobby. Why didnt they poach illicit liquor distilleries? because they would have been beaten up badly by those who distill illicit liquor. Hence they chose a soft target , which any politician with double standards would have approved of. Now Kerala has banned soft drinks and trying to sell coconut water, man how do they assume that coconut water is free of pesticide? I guess politicians in kerala would have to mix urine with their evening liquor! Im not a regular cola drinker, but the comment that thay contain pesticides is absolute crap, and im more inclined to believe that CSE has some soviet era instruments that couldnt tell apart 10 from 0 . Even if they did contain pesticides, the cola companies didnt put them there , it was the so called humble farmers , who are always good at crying to gain sympathy. Sunita Narain claims to be a dog with bones, has anyone heard a dog without bones? unless served in a Korean restaurant? Not to forget that humans dont have to respond to every whine whimper and bark seriously.In short people are dying of air pollution and illicit liquor, not because of cola. The only thing thats really worrying about cola is of course the high sugar content. Seriously wish cola companies come out witha low sugar version( 30% of the original) that doesnt contain aspartame or some fancy artificial sweetener etc.