so there's a myth that coca-cola at one point had cocaine in it not just the coca leaf but actual cocaine but then you hear various versions of this myth slash legend what's the deal with coca-cola the coca leaf and cocaine yeah so it's a it's a great old story i had john pemberton was a pharmacist in atlanta home of coca-cola these days and developed a formula that contained the coca leaf extract from the coca leaf and extract from the cola nut so coca-cola and put this together sold it as a tonic it's an interesting just a quick segue on soft drinks in general so soft drinks came about because they weren't hard drinks so it was an alternative to liquor so they weren't hard alcohol they were soft drinks or soft beverages they also generally had effervescence to them or carbonation and most of those were available at a pharmacist soda fountain so 7up had lithium in it in the past and it was um you know for mind wellness um pepsi had pepsinogen which is a digestive peptide in it um most of the soft drinks dr pepper was developed by dr pepper in waco texas and was a special formula that he had come up with for well-being as well so all these soft drinks have a really cool history but john pemberton's story of coca-cola was it actually goes way back further than coca-cola in terms of putting uh coca leaf into beverages um but we'll we'll just stick with coca-cola so coca-cola um definitely had cocaine in it in in its original setting um and then as time went on and we realized that cocaine was problematic and addictive um there was pressure for him to take that out of of the process and so and what they realized was the coca leaf in in many people that chew coca leaf talk about the different varieties that are available within south uh america and different flavor profiles that are there well the the specific um one that they use for coca-cola has a a definitive flavor profile to it and when they took that out it lost the flavor that people were used to um and so they they decided to keep this in there and coca-cola is still the major importer of coca leaves into the united states to this day they do it through a company called the stepan company in new jersey the leaf comes from peru uh comes from a state-run company in peru that oversees the production of the coca leaf comes into uh this company in new jersey they then process the leaf into um two parts so they take all of the cocaine and all of the cocaine metabolites essentially the alkaloids right we talked about these alkaloids they take the alkaloids out and that gets sent to a pharmaceutical company and those are processed into cocaine which is used as a pharmaceutical still to this day uh a lot of people probably don't know this but cocaine is the best local anesthetic that's ever been discovered uh it was the template for all the local anesthetics that we use now like lidocaine or bapivacaine um it was the template and it is still the best one that we have and it's used almost exclusively for nasal and eye surgeries now where you have to stay awake and you have to be functioning and we we can't intubate you and we can't do these things so this is the ideal uh drug um it's also obviously put into lots of drug testing kits and supplies and whatnot for for the forensics industries but what's the fate of what's left right well that coca leaf extract the dealkalinated extract decoconized extract if you will um is the secret sauce if you will for coca-cola still so that is a grass substance a gras generally recognized as safe food substance and that is the flavoring agent that gives coca-cola its unique flavor and there was a period of time i believe is in the 80s where coca-cola really wanted to distance itself from the cocaine industry cocaine became hugely the drug of choice sort of drug of abuse len bias one nba basketball player died from overdose it just became a very nationally uh aware drug of abuse and there was a problem associated with cocaine and so coca-cola said we're gonna cut our ties with the coca plant completely they came out with this product called new coke and it didn't last long because the flavor profile couldn't be replicated to the old coke and so indeed they re uh re-upped their their sort of contract uh and have been bringing it in ever since and to this day coca-cola classic and coke zero are the two products interestingly enough um you know diet coke does not taste very much like coca-cola original and a lot of people complained about that for a long time um they got smart and made this product called coke zero that has the flavoring agent from the coca plant in it and lo and behold everyone started saying gosh this tastes a lot more like coca-cola does well yeah it's got the flavoring ingredient in it and so everybody in the united states almost has had a coke at one point at a time so you've all had coca leaf already in your dietary chain and i think it'll be interesting to see where things develop as we start to do more research as the world health organization and reconsiders um removing uh coca leaf from an international ban and and looking at it as a potential product to work into food products and develop um further and so you know it supposedly has no abuse potential as the leaf but again it's that story of isolating that one alkaloid out and sort of destroying the rest of it forever however coca-cola was smart enough to keep sort of a monopoly if you will on on keeping that plant alive uh in their product and so it's it's there and um the next time you have a coca-cola or coke zero just realized that it's got natural product in it that's incredible and i'll keep that in mind the next time i have a coke zero is there any evidence that what's still retained from the coca plant in coca-cola is psychoactive and not just there for flavor that's a great question and that's been debated quite a bit so the one thing that we know um is that probably it is not having any psychoactivity um and the the other thing that we know um back to my pharmacy days we used to sell coke syrup so when coke is sold uh for fountain beverages um it's it's the syrup that's then blended with the carbonated water uh to make coca-cola and that's why a lot of people say coca-cola out of a fountain is so much better than out of a can or a bottle because it is it is a sort of formulated on the spot product if you will uh yeah on tap and um coke syrup we used to sell out of the pharmacy for uh nausea and vomiting particularly in pregnant women is one of the safest things you could use and it really calms and settles the gi tract and this is interesting because one of the big um benefits that people report drinking coca tea is that it soothes their gi tract and it calms their gi tract and it helps um them be able to be alert of course the coca tea's got all the alkaloids in it but that same gi tract benefit is still still there and that's probably what's still remaining within that extract that's now devoid of of the alkaloids and you are not paid for by coca-cola no in fact we went to coca-cola to see if we could work um with them on developing uh some type of medications or or something from the coca leaf and i have a former colleague that is in their natural products division at coca-cola and they said they won't even let us touch the the coca extract and they've also got all that cocaine that they've pulled out of the coca leaf in this plant in new jersey i can only imagine what the security is on this place i don't i don't know but if you you know you can you can fact check me on wikipedia or or which is not a great place to fact check but uh you got my agreement there but this the stepan company is listed there in new jersey and their connection to coca-cola and this whole this whole story is actually out there in front of everybody to see um it just takes knowing where to look and find it love it last question about soda is there still lithium and 7up no lithium has gone from 7up but that was the whole idea right up mood lift your mood up and lithium and we know lithium carbonate is still used to this day as a treatment for uh psychosis so