Would you like some bacteria with your fountain soda?
All that's left of my final fountain Diet Coke.
Jessica Webster | AnnArbor.com
Great. Now even my Diet Coke is trying to kill me.
The straw dropped from my lips as I read further. It turns out that the party poopers over at the International Journal of Food Microbiology have a study out showing that - of the 30 fountain drink dispensers they tested - coliform bacteria was detected in 48% of the beverages. And most of it was resistant to antibiotics.
Now I already knew that drinking this stuff is bad for me. When I was living in the Netherlands as a teenager, our milkman used to spout off statistics as he grudgingly sold us liters of Diet Coke every week. "You know you can dissolve a nail if you leave it in a glass of Coke overnight, right? And it takes half as long if you put it in Diet Coke. Think about your stomach lining!"
Whether or not colas are caustic enough to dissolve a nail (check out this cool blog to see for yourself), I do know that there are all kinds of arguments against drinking them. A full-sugar - or should I say high-fructose corn syrup - soda is full of empty calories and will stain and rot my teeth. Diet sodas contain Aspartame, an invention of our friends at Monsanto. The jury is still out on just how bad Aspartame is for us, but studies show links to both cancer in rats and depression in humans.
So for me, it's back to water. It's what I make my son drink, and I should really lead by example. I picked up a great BPA-free water bottle over the summer. And for those times when I really want some carbonation, there's always Michigan-made Cap10 and LaCroix.
Jessica Webster oversees Food & Drink coverage on the Community Team for AnnArbor.com. Contact her at JessicaWebster@AnnArbor.com.
Comments
Technojunkie
Wed, Jan 6, 2010 : 10:52 a.m.
Kleen Kanteen stainless steel water bottles are my favorite. Safest and most durable bottles you can buy. Soda has a pH of 2. It quickly wipes out your bicarbonate, which is important for your immune system, and then starts working on your calcium in an effort to neutralize the acid. Phosphoric acid in colas neutralizes magnesium. So, even "all natural" sodas are a bad idea. I drink only water now.
theodynus
Tue, Jan 5, 2010 : 4:10 p.m.
Have more people gotten infections from drinking water or soda fountains? I'm pretty sure it's the former. It's important to know that the presence of coliform bacteria does not necessarily indicate that there's anything in there that's harmful to a healthy person. Most of what they're talking about are opportunistic bacteria that only bother people who are already pretty sick. From the wikipedia: "[Chryseobacterium meningosepticum] has generally been reported to cause outbreaks of meningitis predominantly in premature newborns and infants in neonatal intensive care units of underdeveloped countries" Basically, this article just means that conditions are there to allow a nasty colony of bacteria to take hold, so it's a good idea to clean soda fountains. It doesn't necessarily mean that anyone has ever gotten sick from a coke at a soda fountain. You're WAY more likely to catch something standing in line for soda than to catch something FROM the soda. B'sides, exposure to all sorts of filthy stuff is probably good for you.