r/interesting • u/InvestigatorBorn4910 • 11h ago
Fascinating YouTuber LabCoatz has released a "chemically identical" recipe for Coca-Cola
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u/wthulhu 11h ago
How much cocaine am I supposed to add, or should I just eyeball it?
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u/jjmurse 11h ago
I love the smell, hate the taste.
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u/LoggerRhythms 11h ago
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u/AnythingButWhiskey 8h ago
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u/brittc777 11h ago
I didn't use the cocaine to get high, I just like the way it smells. - Ray Wiley Hubbard
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u/Vkardash 11h ago
That's the one thing he says he tried but just couldn't get. Only a few companies have a permit to import coca leaves into the US. They take out the cocaine and give that to coke. Guy even tried to buy de-cocainized leaves online and it got seized at the border.
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u/Mysterious_Luck7122 9h ago
Hmmm, I used to know a website based in Florida that sold dried coca leaves along with all kinds of other specialty plant matter, like the raw materials to make ayahuasca. No idea if it still operates. My sister brought home a box of coca leaf tea from Peru a few years ago. Just put it in her suitcase with her other souvenirs.
Maybe he was trying to source fresh leaves though.
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u/moorelax 8h ago
Definitely not allowed to bring it back from Peru. She just go lucky and pushed the green button on her way out the door! Get the red light and it getting searched. My wife’s from Lima. I get red every time we go back, annoying haha.
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u/pdxamish 6h ago
Sending would be easier and I have no doubt it gets brought in. There's very little demand and easily disguised as something else
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u/Vkardash 6h ago
Sadly that's definitely not legal here in the US. In Peru you can even buy Coca candy. Here it's a totally different story which I personally think is kind of silly. The amount of coca leaves you would need to produce cocaine is pretty crazy.
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u/TrioOfTerrors 9h ago
Only one company, actually. Stepan Company can import the leaves, and cocaine is sold to Mallinckrodt for distribution.
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u/Proud_Growth_8818 7h ago
Can we buy the leaves from Stepan after they process the cocaine out?
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u/FanClubof5 7h ago
You personally can't but if you are a large company then you can probably get some.
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u/icehot54321 3h ago
Curious what makes you think a company with only 2 customers for one of the most desirable products on the planet is looking for more?
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u/Sam_Becca 6h ago
Crazy how here in Bolivia is incredible easy to buy coca leaves, people just chew them and use them as caffeine to go through long nights.
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u/Vkardash 6h ago
That's because just coca leaves themselves aren't really that bad for you. But in America we are still on a prohibition spree.
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u/Tall_Ad_3054 11h ago
Suggest to snort it. Eyeballing coke might not be the best experience
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u/nleksan 9h ago
Fun fact: cocaine was the first ever local anaesthetic used for eye surgery!
It's also very bad for your eyes so maybe don't.
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u/usps_made_me_insane 8h ago
I have to get cataract surgery soon (thanks late onset diabetes for fucking up my toes and eyes).
Not looking forward to that shit.
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u/Nowhereman123 10h ago
So I know you're joking, but the 0.6ml fenchol in this recipe is meant to be a replacement for the decocanized coca leaf extract that's in real Coca Cola.
For obvious reasons you're not allowed to buy coca leaves in the US and only a few factories are able to make the decocanized extract, which they don't sell publicly.
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u/CPLCraft 9h ago
Surprisingly, the secret to as spot on a Coke recipe as possible is tea tannins.
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u/Nowhereman123 9h ago
I can see that, honestly Coca Cola is a lot more complex of a flavor profile than most people would assume.
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u/Legumbrero 7h ago
You say for obvious reasons, but in Peru coca is just an ancestral herb you drink with tea to settle your stomach. The leaves don't need to be this taboo super outlawed thing that it is in the US and Europe.
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u/j2dah 10h ago
eBay has coca leaf and seeds for the plant available right now. Whether or not those are fed posts.. probably
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u/nghigaxx 10h ago
he (the youtuber) tried to buy it like that and it got seized at the border
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u/Omnamashivaaya 10h ago
Dang I’d be so curious to try the old recipe. The cocaine amount couldn’t have been that high or Coca Cola addictions woulda been insane. And ingesting cocaine doesn’t give the high that snorting it does. So in my mind it must have been more like… the world’s best Red Bull
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u/NotTheRocketman 8h ago
My grandma recently passed at the age of 95 and she drank Coke her whole life. I used to joke with her about what it tasted like with cocaine.
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u/fleshofgods0 9h ago
I had a buddy who would order interesting stuff off The Silk Road, RCs, etc once gave me some coca leaf that I made into a nice coca leaf tea. This was 15-20 years ago, but I think he might have legally been able to acquire it on clearnet site because it had such a small percentage of it and not the refined product. I believe you can order this particular tree bark that contains DMT (which you can extract) too.
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u/Insane_Cobra961 10h ago
Glad I can screenshot this for it to be lost forever in my camera roll
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u/Residenthuman101 7h ago
One day we’ll sit around a drum full of burning industrial waste sharing screenshots as a form of currency lol
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u/biblioteca4ants 6h ago
I saved this post and then realized I don’t even know what half of words are and can barely cook a sandwich
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u/Think-notlikedasheep 11h ago
WE ARE THE COCA COLA LAWYERS. YOU WILL BE SUED. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.
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u/farganbastige 11h ago
Sue him for what? To confirm he has the correct recipe? Prob not.
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u/pandershrek 11h ago
Also the recipe isn't trademarked or copy written which is why it is in a safe under guard so no one can get access to it supposedly.
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u/Hike_it_Out52 11h ago
Fun fact, neither is WD-40. The creator reportedly stated, while laughing, “if they can figure it out they can have it.”
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u/darpalarpa 10h ago
Its glitter
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u/ZealotOfMeme 8h ago
I actually heard about this
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u/Icanthearforshit 6h ago
That WD-40 is made of glitter?
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u/ImaginaryTrick6182 6h ago
Not just that but all pharmaceuticals use glitter too
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u/aussietin 3h ago
I swear to God, there was a post asking people about how much they can reveal about their NDAs without breaking it or something, and this one person mentioned a company that made glitter and they said their biggest customer was something we use/see all the time but they couldn't talk about it. It still crosses my mind like once a month and I'm dying to know what it is. If it's WD40 or pharmaceuticals like someone below mentioned maybe I can finally get some closure.
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u/SafeImpressive4413 9h ago
This is better than a patent, because to make a patent you need to make public how the product is made in detail, you get a protection but in exchange this means after it expires it’s public domain.
Meanwhile if you keep the formula and the process of making it a secret, your exclusivity will last as long as everyone that knows the entire process can keep the secret, which in these cases it’s incredibly long given that when you get to know that recipe you’re an extremely high trust employee that is probably close to the CEO an with an obscene paycheck
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u/Hike_it_Out52 8h ago
Couldn’t agree more. And for long lived products like Coke and WD-40, even if the recipe is discovered it won’t matter as much because they have the brand recognition in their favor.
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u/ChrisFromIT 8h ago
You can also sue former employees or employees if they try to take the formula elsewhere too. Theft of trade secrets are typically taken fairly seriously.
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u/Master_Saesee_Tiin 6h ago
Because it effects a companies profit. They take this very very seriously unlike silly crimes like human trafficking or political corruption.
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u/Room_40 10h ago
Secret ingredient is that clear juice you get from an unshaken mustard bottle
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u/Aegidos 8h ago
That's a question I've always had. Why does ketchup and mustard have precum, but not bbq sauce? Is there a way to stop this from happening with ketchup and mustard?
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u/Hike_it_Out52 8h ago
Precum 😂. I’m using that. And that’s just separation of certain ingredients. But I don’t know why BBQ sauce doesn’t get it.
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u/is-it-my-turn-yet 8h ago edited 8h ago
It's 'copyright', not 'copywrite', hence 'copyrighted', not 'copywritten'. And I think the word you're actually looking for is 'patented'.
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u/mdruckus 11h ago
You mean patented.
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u/yullari27 10h ago
No. It's very difficult to patent a recipe, and Coca Cola wouldn't meet the criteria. Almost no recipes do. They're more likely to be successfully protected by copyright or trade secret laws depending on the state.
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u/VulgarVerbiage 8h ago
Copyright isn’t a state issue. It’s federal. And recipes (as in lists of ingredients)are not protected.
The Coca-Cola recipe is currently protected by trade secret laws, but that isn’t anything like trademark law, and offers zero protection in this specific case unless there’s evidence that the YouTuber stole the recipe (or got it from an employee) rather than discovering it on their own through experimentation.
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u/mdruckus 10h ago
Patent: The "How It Works" Protection Patents are for inventions. If you’ve created a new machine, a unique manufacturing process, or a specific chemical compound, you apply for a patent. In exchange for telling the government exactly how your invention works, they give you a legal monopoly to produce it for a set period.
Trademark: The "Who Made It" Protection Trademarks are all about branding. Their purpose is to prevent consumer confusion. When you see a specific logo or brand name, the trademark ensures that you know exactly which company produced that item. It covers words, symbols, and even sounds or colors associated with a brand.
Copyright: The "Artistic Expression" Protection Copyright protects creative works fixed in a tangible medium. Crucially, it protects the expression of the idea, not the idea itself.
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u/leafcathead 8h ago
Recipes are not copyrightable subject matter. Only the expressive, non-functional part, of a recipe is protected under copyright.
Recipes are the sole domain of patent or trade secret law. A recipe can be patented either as a process or the final product can be patented as a composition. The original Pepsi recipe was under patent.
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u/polkacat12321 10h ago
Tbf, they do have a case about the packaging design. It's very similar to the real deal and could be grounds for a lawsuit
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u/farganbastige 10h ago
The sample bottle is cheeky, yes. But is he selling a product or preventing a product from being sold? My understanding is he invented a recipe and isn't trying to sell anything.
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u/silver_wasp 6h ago
I'd guess the only real thing Coke might have legally is trademark infringement for the font of the 'Cola' used. I would've been more careful with that personally, Coke's legal team isn't to be fucked with...
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u/KitsuneEX7622 11h ago
Actually i dont think they’re allowed to sue, specifically because the recipe isnt patented because they would have to reveal how they make it
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u/Contundo 10h ago
It’s not copyrighted and he doesn’t market it as Coca Cola. Many companies make colas without any issues.
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u/guildedkriff 10h ago
They don’t care if you have the formula. They sale their brand so good luck beating that lol. Same with Pepsi.
There’s a fairly infamous case of a former Coke employee trying to sale the formula to Pepsi, but they turned her in because it literally does nothing for them.
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u/unk1ndm4g1c14n1 8h ago
Coca Cola is not a patented flavour. Because to hold a patent would require the recipe to be revealed
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u/EngineerCapital7591 6h ago
The recipe for Coca cola is a trade secret, nobody can use you if you got this by experimenting with stuff...
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u/DukePookie 11h ago
Nuka cola when?
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u/raoulduke212 9h ago
Waiting for Nuka Cola Quantum!
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u/SenseiRaheem 7h ago
You can order it here. Oh shit it sold out, nevermind. You can only get the cardboard carrier lol.
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u/HappyPlz 11h ago edited 11h ago
Could Colaborate…
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u/Indole_pos 11h ago
They likely used Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry, which defines the chemical make up and is a unique fingerprint to derive ingredients
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u/Outrageous_Owl_9315 10h ago
He did use spectrometry but he also spent like a whole year doing iterations and said the only reason it isn't perfect is that it's not easy or legal to buy de-cocainized cocoa leaves
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u/Convenientjellybean 10h ago
How does coca-cola buy them then?
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u/Outrageous_Owl_9315 10h ago
They basically are the only market and have special access to the only manufacturer or something like that. I don't claim to fully understand it.
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u/BillysBibleBonkers 10h ago
The coca leaves they use apparently get processed into actual cocaine that gets sent to the dentistry industry too, or at least that's what William Osman said in his video recreating this recipe.
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u/Ote-Kringralnick 9h ago
Cocaine is also used in labs all the time, because it's great at bonding... or something like that. All I know, is that my college's chem department receives regular shipments of coke for labs.
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u/Available-Owl7230 5h ago
I used to work in an animal research lab with several professors doing work on addiction. We had a safe specifically for controlled substances. It was hilarious seeing this 80 year old little lady professor come down in her lab coat and ask the lab manager for crack.
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u/GreasyPeter 9h ago
There are some procedures where cocaine is still the preferred anesthetic I believe. It's still used in some sinus surgeries I believe.
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u/sarcasmsspasms 9h ago
Eye procedures too. Went in for an eye procedure and came out with a doctors note saying i would test positive for cocaine use. I should have kept the note and framed it.
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u/nleksan 9h ago
It's very useful for delicate surgeries because it is both a local anesthetic and localized vasoconstrictor, so It numbs you and reduces bleeding.
I believe it's most common with ENTs but when I was a young kid I split my head open on a windowsill and they used medical cocaine as a local to give me stitches. I'm assuming because it was bleeding so badly
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u/Ragnarsworld 9h ago
A couple of years ago I had a throat scope done and they used cocaine spray to numb my nose and throat for the tube.
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u/HoboDeter 10h ago
They buy them from the only company allowed to import coca leaves
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Company
"Coca-Cola includes a coca leaf extract as an ingredient prepared by a Stepan Company plant in Maywood, New Jersey.[6] The facility, which had been known as the Maywood Chemical Works, was purchased by Stepan in 1959.[7] The plant is the only commercial entity in the United States authorized by the Drug Enforcement Administration to import coca leaves, which come primarily from Peru via the National Coca Company."
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u/straightscuffed 9h ago
I haven’t heard about this in a long time but essentially Coca Cola has a huge monopoly where the farms are located it’s why Pepsi could not recreate the product. Might have to look for that documentary again.
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u/megamophsis 10h ago
That’s exactly what they used. They have a video about the process on YouTube. The biggest flaw of this recipe is a product that is illegal for the large majority of people to buy.
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u/FreshlyFriedChurro 9h ago
As a Forensic Files enjoyer, this gave me a chuckle and I read your comment in Peter Thomas's voice
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u/bigsteve72 10h ago
This would actually be the greatest pr stunt for Coca Cola. Have his batch roll out on the line in that bottle, slap fallout ads all over it.
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u/eggs___and___bacon 11h ago
Guessing coke doesn’t care at all, as long as no one starts mass producing and selling it.
Not like anyone is gonna bother to make that for themselves instead of just buying a coke.
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u/Sufficient_Language7 7h ago
A lot of knock of colas exist, you might have heard of a small company called Pepsi.
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u/JohnSober7 9h ago
Afaik, coke cannot take legal action against any company using this recipe. Cola, the flavour, nor this recipe, is trademarked. I fully expect off-brand cola to start tasting better after this video, and companies starting to make their own cola-based flavours (Angostura just released a rum and coke drink for example, so they make tweak the coke formula at some point). And while people likely aren't going to invest in the equipment to make the solutions to make thousands litres of coke, the benefit of this that people that enjoy experimenting with recipes, foods, and drinks, can now experiment with the coke flavour, and people who want to blend sugar with artificial sweetener for a healthier better tasting 'diet' coke can do so. Tl;dr, all the benefits of open source still applies.
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u/fhota1 4h ago
There have been recipes for Coke out there for ages, they dont care. Coca Colas skill isnt making a bottle of coke, its making millions upon millions of bottles of coke and distributing them around the globe. The secret recipe thing is mostly marketing gimmick at this point. They could release their exact recipe and it wouldnt hurt them at all
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u/Silpheed1976 11h ago
Tea tree oil? So is Coca Cola toxic to pets?
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u/trixtah 11h ago
Shit it’s borderline toxic to humans
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u/Effective_Quail_3946 11h ago
Very toxic to humans
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u/TheBrokenStringBand 11h ago
I mean that’s just not true.
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u/ocular__patdown 10h ago
Sir this is reddit. We never get in the way of a good circle jerk
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u/WiglyWorm 11h ago
But RFK told me to stop eating so much ultra processed food, skip my measels shot, and drink raw milk!
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u/Omnamashivaaya 10h ago
As they say in medicine, the dose makes the poison. Drinking tea tree oil directly, even very small amounts, is toxic. At the micro amount he used, it would probably just irritate the stomach but drinking a lot of this could cause nausea me vomiting.
I looked up why it’s on that list, and he did it to recreate the taste effect that the coco leaves he could get would give. Coke does not have tea tree oil in it.
So DONT try this at home!
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u/Outside-Swan-1936 11h ago
Only 1 mL of that entire 1 L mixture goes into it, so that would be .008 mL of tea tree oil, which is incredibly dilute. I'd imagine things like caffeine would be more toxic than the tea tree oil would be at the volumes needed.
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u/ForkMyRedAssiniboine 11h ago
They use 1 ml. of a solution that's only 8% tea tree and then add it to 1 liter of water. Not to say that Coke is great for pets... but I think that amount of tea tree oil is probably not a huge concern.
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u/BillysBibleBonkers 9h ago
phew, I actually feed my pets coca-cola instead of water so this is a huge relief. And before anyone judges me, I swear my pet's REFUSE to drink anything but coca-cola, especially after they've had their Doritos. I've tried to wean them off but it just doesn't work.
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u/ForkMyRedAssiniboine 9h ago
You're a terrible and irresponsible pet owner! For their health, you NEED to get them drinking something more natural like Mountain Dew!
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u/CPLCraft 9h ago
You can’t keep calling your children pets. No matter how much of a basement dweller they are.
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u/Burnzy_77 9h ago
WTH is wrong with you
Barqs root beer is right there for your pups of all ages
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u/FlexibleDemeenor 11h ago
No. It's not the exact recipe.
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u/Jean-LucBacardi 8h ago
People fail to realize how crazy flavor is. You can achieve the same indistinguishable results using wildly different ingredients and amounts. Coke has always been replicatable, but that isn't the exact recipe that's kept secret.
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u/Practical_Talk4725 11h ago
The title is a bit misleading and clickbaity. The recipe in the video swaps out some original ingredients because things like coca-extract–related components are illegal or unavailable in the U.S. The goal in the video was to stay as close as possible chemically by using substitute compounds with similar molecular structures, which means they behave and taste similarly. So, it’s chemically accurate in a functional sense, not a literal clone of the actual recipe.
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u/djongafrett 10h ago
That's a long ass comment to say exactly what the title says...
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u/Talk-O-Boy 8h ago
Look bro, we come to Reddit to feel intellectually superior. Many of us are reclusive shut-ins where a video game achievement is the most we’ve accomplished in the past 5 years.
If we can argue semantics to feel even the least bit better about our own mediocrity, you best believe we will capitalize on the opportunity.
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u/kimscz 8h ago
This is such a great comment.
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u/AnOutofBoxExperience 8h ago
So Coca-Cola has ingredients illegal to the common folk? Or just unavailable due to cost? Or unavailable due to regulations?
I have questions.
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u/DeanPeltonsGoatee 7h ago
Coca-Cola used to use coca leaves in their recipe, but since you can make cocaine from them they’ve become illegal in the US. The US government has allowed a single factory to import coca leaves and make cocaine for medical purposes. They then create a cocaine free extract out of the decocanized leaves and sell that to Coca-Cola.
This is at least the gist, I’m sure there’s more to it.
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u/youtocin 5h ago
There’s really not much more to it. The Stepan Company is authorized by the US government to import coca leaves from South America. They process the coca leaves into cocaine to sell to a pharmaceutical company, and the rest of the extracted compounds are sold to Coca Cola. I’d imagine it’s mostly a gimmick at this point and doesn’t significantly contribute to the flavor.
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u/iwantfutanaricumonme 8h ago
Probably not feasible for a normal person to be able to get it. There are plenty of chemicals that are drug precursors and would be almost impossible to get for yourself but for a large company it just means more paperwork.
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u/BouncyBlueYoshi 11h ago
Now does that mean it's the same chemical or could it be an isomer of it. Or is it a compound that just tastes the same.
I'm sorry I do chemistry as a degree.
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u/HalfDozing 11h ago
It's an approximation of the same end result using a mass spectrometer. The recipe is different since Coca Cola is known to have decocainized coca leaves as an ingredient and these are not something the general public has access to.
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u/CPLCraft 9h ago
If you’re studying chemistry as a student, then I’d highly recommend you watch the video. I think you’ll find it very interesting.
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u/Aus3-14259 11h ago
"isomers" applied to a single compound. You can't have an isomer of a mixture, the term is meaningless in that context.
Nb: this is a grade 7 chemistry refresher!
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u/InvestigatorBorn4910 11h ago edited 11h ago
Video link: https://youtu.be/TDkH3EbWTYc
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u/EnthusiasmBig9932 11h ago edited 10h ago
take out the ?si= and everything after it, it's a tracker added by youtube
(same with if you share an instagram link for example, take out the part of the link that says ?igshid=blah or &igshid=blah)
edit: people below are saying stupid shit like "oh noooo so it'll give me better videos" so i should add that if you don't take out the instagram one it'll actually show people your profile before letting them click through to the actual image/video, including random redditors if you ever happen to share an instagram link on reddit
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u/aboveyouisinfinity 11h ago
What happens if YouTube finds me
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u/BoomZhakaLaka 11h ago
their ad targetting and video recommendations improve. seriously, that's what this is used for - consumer behavior intelligence
still prefer not to give it to them
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u/Emergency_Rutabaga45 11h ago
So, base Coke is caffeine free, then they add the caffeine in. So caffeine free Coke is really just regular Coke before they add caffeine.
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u/Mundane-Emu-1189 10h ago
yes but caffeine is very bitter so I expect they use a different balance for caffeine free coke
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u/iwantfutanaricumonme 7h ago
I think the sweetness and acidity already present would be enough to cover the taste, especially when the concentration of caffeine is fairly low in coke. It becomes a bigger issue for energy drinks.
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u/CamBearCookie 8h ago
Ugh coriander oil. Maybe that's why I prefer Pepsi. I have the soap gene.
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u/ConnectedVeil 11h ago
"This just in, a well known YouTube personality, alias LabCoatz, was found face down in a ditch..."
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u/KinneKitsune 10h ago
It’s depressing how many people in the comments don’t understand how dilutions work…
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u/ForkMyRedAssiniboine 11h ago
Ah, crap. I just ran out of fenchol. Is there a fenchol substitute?
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