Being a developer I don’t drink tea or coffee. That’s not exclusively true, if we’re making proper coffee at a dinner party I will have a cup but I tend to play that down as I feel a slowly developing taste for coffee and the fact we throw dinner parties are both signs that I am getting old. But back on the point, when I need that pick me up, it’s all abou the energy drinks. You just can’t beat them.
Just reading over the front of my can of Red Bull though I notice is proudly announces…
0g fat
123 calories
0g salt
Which is great. Though it makes me question why it would be an achivement to have no fat or salt in a drink. I mean, is that normal? Did it used to? It’s like when you see “suitable for vegitarians” on a chocolate bar and wonder why it wasn’t before (interestly, McDonald’s strawberry milkshakes only became suitable for vegitarians about 6 months ago, think about what that means :p).
Futher round the back of the can it goes on to say…
A serving (250ml) contains the equivalent of approx. 0g of salt
What does that mean? Approximately means it actually does contain some salt I presume. And equivalent means it has some kind of salt substitute equal to the amount of salt that would be in there if there was salt in there? Which means none as there isn’t any? So they have replaced the salt with 0g of something similar?
What are the betting lawyers were involved here?
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September 12th, 2008 at 9:21 am
It is to do with sodium being in foodstuff. Sodium is normally found in there due to salt, but salt looks bad on nutritional information, so companies would put sodium. This meant they could put a smaller number and you had to do a calculation (double it maybe? I dunno) to work out how much salt was in stuff you were eating (if you cared). The government stopped food companies being able to do this and forced them (I think) to put the equivalent salt content on products. However, I could be wrong.
In Hong Kong, Coca-Cola sell water called Bon-Aqua which lists Sodium Chloride in it’s ingredients (as well as magnesium something). What the point of putting a little bit of salt in water is, I have no idea. It had a funny taste (although obviously it didn’t taste of salt, because then it wouldn’t have made you less thirsty) and I didn’t drink it.
September 12th, 2008 at 9:24 am
“Being a developer I don’t drink tea or coffee.”
Well then you’re just Wrong.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:20 am
This is incorrect; Salt is NaCl whereas Sodium is Na. One is a chemical compound the other a chemical element. If there is salt in the beverage it would be illegal to describe it as Na (Sodium) when it was in fact NaCl (Salt or Sodium Chloride) as they are chemically different substances.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
No, it isn’t, when on the nutritional information (not on the ingredients list) they only used to have to put sodium. For example, when it tells you how much iron is in stuff, that isn’t just iron (well sometimes it is, but not always), that is iron compounded with other stuff, that your body breaks down into iron. The whole of cooking is chemical compounds.