Coca-Cola Secret Formula | What's inside Coke | ENDEVR Documentary

wherever you are on the planet not far from you is a plant like this working 24 7. it produces the world's most consumed soft drink coca-cola every day the multinational sells almost 2 billion bottles in 126 years the red and white brand has colonized the world without ever giving up its secret recipe but why such mystery what's hidden inside what are we actually drinking [Applause] [Music] the multinational refuses to reveal its recipe so we went in search of its hidden ingredients our investigation begins in atlanta the coca-cola capital of the world it's here that the drink was born in 1886 [Music] a stone's throw from its headquarters the company has opened a museum to glorify the brand it was here in 2011 that matar kent the group's ceo officially hid the secret recipe in a giant safe a safe that stands in the middle of what looks like a theme park for coke fans and thank you again for joining us here today at the world of what coca-cola is trying to display is the wonderful world the company has fashioned in 126 years of existence [Music] a world of happiness just like in its commercials [Music] here families pose for photos with the brand's mascot the famous polar bear [Music] coca-cola have agreed to let us film as long as we're escorted by the museum's security chief and oppressed attache [Music] what's inside this drink to cause right this instant over 78 million people worldwide to open a can or bottle of coke here they cultivate the secret and play on it it's even become a promotional tool so coca-cola doesn't skimp on staging follow me [Music] a secret formula for the most deliciously different taste the world has ever known a secret formula for all that is was and ever will be the heart of coca-cola [Music] the secret formula for coca-cola is here the original recipe is here yes ma'am it is have you seen it no i have not seen it no but our ceo has seen it he's the one who plays to him you know this past december 8th um in celebration of our 125th anniversary we did bring this over here and we had a grand ceremony to commemorate uh the transportation of the secret foreign from the old fault to a so he knows the secret formula well i don't know if he knows it or not but he knows where he and he's probably one of the few people who would have it so it's time to check i cannot open it it doesn't work you have to let go they can't have you hold on it says security's going to know you can step back they'll send an alarm to them oh you mean that security is going to come no what's going to happen is a police officer is going to come ok i'm going to wait for them here okay i think it's a part of a show it is in there i can't show it to you you ready who should i contact who should i contact another formula coca-cola cuts short our visit we won't find out anymore we're not the first to try to uncover one of the best-kept industrial secrets in the world [Music] the brand's competitors fans and even chemists have all tried to analyze the famous soft drink but in vain nobody has ever managed to identify all the ingredients until the day a u.s radio station announced an amazing discovery we think we may have found the original recipe for coca-cola and i am not kidding i am not kidding one of the most famously guarded trade secrets on the planet i have it right here it was a surprise when we stumbled across an article one of their columnist charles salter without any fanfare at all publish what looks like the original recipe for coca-cola charles salter lives in the atlanta suburbs he's now retired after 25 years working for a local daily newspaper this is my fishing tackle room and i tie flies this thing is your hobby fishing is my uh hobby my pastime why don't you take a look over there and see if there's a cardboard box the formula is somewhere here okay look oh stick cassette have you look it cannot be here no that's flat tying material simplified subtle it's the only corner we haven't looked oh yes voila it's so exciting so you think it's somewhere here yeah the photographs in 1979 i went to gainesville georgia and talked to my old friend fishing buddy everett beale and his wife judy who have a drug store there and he said charles take a look at this coco cola improved when i made this photograph and i looked at everett and judy i said holy mackerel i've got the story of the year [Laughter] this document supposedly dates from 1910 it's a handwritten copy in poor condition of the original recipe the first surprise is that coca-cola contained alcohol but also lemon orange and coriander extracts and at the top of the list an astonishing ingredient what's that coco i think it was quite a surprise to a lot of people who read my georgia rambler column to see these ingredients and there was certainly discussion uh in the atlanta area i thought it was a very significant scoop but coca-cola did not confirm that it was an early formula and um i would like to believe it was an early formula but this is this is one of those mysteries that it would be so difficult to prove [Music] so one of the ingredients in the original recipe was coca plant leaf and its derivative cocaine which is why the soda was named coca-cola [Music] but why add a drug to a soft drink the answer is 25 miles away in the city of columbus this is where john pemberton lived the man who invented coca-cola [Music] a quaint old house turned into a museum all that's left of the pharmacist's history a history the brand prefers to ignore [Music] this he invented lots of different drinks so these are a couple of the advertisements that were here um in columbus and so he was always kind of mixing up different drinks a lot of times people thought of sodas and things kind of as medicine and so that is why a lot of pharmacies were also soda shops then because they were pretty much the same thing you that's where you got your sodas yes coca-cola was a medicine at the beginning um and it did have cocaine in it at the beginning or it was supposed to be like help you with whatever injury whatever pain you had or any kind of stomach ache headache you know normal kind of aches that you would have so all of that um he became addicted to morphine after after the civil war because he was injured and so it gave it kind of that addictiveness but it was still it wasn't as you know as bad as morphine and things but visit us the no um i mean we just like to give kids the the basic about coca-cola and um we don't we don't tell them about that it has cocaine and or did have cocaine in it or anything like that um we like to give them a more idealized version of cocaine i mean of coca-cola a pharmacist hooked on cocaine and putting the drug in his drink leaves a nasty stain on the wonderful world of coca-cola [Music] the red and white brand hasn't changed its name but does the famous soda still contain the extract of cocoa plant leaves new york is home to one of the few americans who dares challenge the world's most powerful brand the founder of the campaign to stop killer coke is ray rogers for 10 years this trade union activist has been denouncing what he calls the hidden face of coca-cola ramon you get fired now you go out to find another job so you know louise what happened i've been [Music] around the table 15 employees or former employees of coca-cola plants they plan to file a lawsuit for harassment in the workplace and racial discrimination [Music] these workers make the soft drink for millions of americans they don't know the recipe all they do is mix the cola syrup with water before it's bottled or canned is one of you have heard of seeing coca leaves the uh um we've heard of it but we're never allowed to see it because once again the syrup is not made here but we have heard uh things without a doubt yes i remember um we get um concentrated soda that comes in barrels and these really big barrels of plastic that have a cage a metal cage around them and i've seen that thing literally strip the paint right off the floor it would take the paint right off the floor and and you cannot touch it with your hands it's a highly caustic acid and even the cleaners that they have to clean that with is uh highly caustic you can't even touch it with your hands but normally it's just sugar and some flavors no no no no no no no i wish it was i wish it was but that's not that's not what it is they don't want to let us know exactly what's going into that product i don't understand how can any government allow any company to make something that the product the ingredient to that product is secret we have children drinking this make yourself at home if anybody's got the ideas over the years ray rogers has discovered enough information to embarrass the soft drink giant he takes us far from uptown new york to one of the ports of new jersey [Music] according to him this is where the company still discreetly imports the favorite ingredient of pharmacist john pemberton very impressive area well this is where they bring in a lot of coca leaves from bolivia and peru and ebc yes the ships arrive here and the coca-lease are only allowed to be imported into this country for two reasons uh one reason is for medicinal purposes and the other reason is for coca-cola that they use in the production of some of their beverages and that to my understanding is the only way the cocoa leaves can be imported into this country and most of them come in from i understand bolivia and peru yes i think uh coca-cola does not like to admit that it used coca-leaves in the production of some of its beverages well then one would have to ask why is it then that they bring in all these coca leaves what are they doing with them well they must be putting it in their beverages right so why don't they admit it and i guess if you look on the bottle of coca-cola you don't see an ingredient that says coca leaves you say that's kind of interesting because my understanding is you're always supposed to have whatever ingredients they may have a secret formula but maybe that's what the secret flavor really is it's some of the coca leaves in the production that's probably that's the big secret that nobody's supposed to know it seems then that the world's biggest selling soda still contains coca plant leaves but ray rogers believes they're only used in flavoring for their bitter taste to eliminate the cocaine the atlanta giant is thought to use a specialized firm stepan company its plant is just a few miles from the port hello madam i tried to call many times to watch someone here and i would like to know if is it the place or where you process coca leaves here let me see if someone can thank you yeah we can't discuss our customers here so that's why yeah but i mean nobody can tell me is it the place where you process cookie leaves import forms and we can't discuss our customers well we can't help you here okay i mean you don't have any manager you're gonna have to have a good day okay i mean there's no way i mean i think it's my right to know that you know have a good day clearly it's not just coca-cola that likes to keep secrets hello sir did you bring some coca leaves in the plants hey sir are you are you going to coca-cola i am not bringing it there but it is eventually going there oh okay uh because i mean uh stephanie is processing coca leaves right i don't know what they're doing yeah but do what do you have in your truck i got drums liquid ah what is what kind of liquid it is it's just going to coca-cola as far as i know it could be a syrup it could be i don't know and you don't know what it is inside a liquid it's a food trying to figure out what are the ingredients in coca-cola i don't know yeah they don't let us know that yeah i mean it's secret of course like everything else bye [Applause] stephan does supply coca-cola with a mysterious liquid but has this product anything to do with the coca plant leaf excuse me do you live here hello yeah do you know um stephen company yeah and do you know what they are doing what kind of uh well i know a long time ago i actually worked on my electrician used to make cocaine there like way back there i was talking like 15 20 years ago oh okay they were making cocaine that's what i was told i did electrical work in there and now you don't know what they're doing i haven't worked there in 15 years you know still use coca-leaves you know that and uh i i thought somebody told me that it was in this plant that they are they are processing the coca leaves possible i know they used to make cocaine okay you know medical grade okay basically what stepan refuses to say is that trucks leave their plant to deliver at coca-cola there's no longer any cocaine in the soda but it does appear to contain the extract of cocoa plant leaf [Music] why does the world leader in soda try to hide this ingredient after two months of asking for an interview 12 phone calls and 21 emails coca-cola usa will give us the same answer as its french subsidiary hello yes amanda it's olivia how are you yeah i'm fine i'm sorry i i cannot hear you with a cell phone okay um i wanted to let you know that we're not going to be able to provide anyone for you to speak with in new york so there's no need for you to extend your stay there on your side i mean uh yeah for sure i'm not going to have anyone in usa that's what you told me correct there won't be anybody here correct okay okay thank you for having trying thank you amanda yes thank you bye coca-cola is the world's biggest selling beverage but its drinkers don't have the right to know what they're drinking in the u.s however the brand is being accused more and more not over its secret formula but over another ingredient one we're all familiar with [Music] on the other side of the country one state has declared war on soda in california it's now prohibited to sell sweetened drinks in public places and schools [Music] we should point out that 40 percent of californians are overweight or obese but it's not that easy to change the american way of life the anti-soda brigade is up against war machines like coca-cola which spend billions of dollars on advertising [Music] harold goldstein is california's leading anti-soda campaigner he knows the battle is far from won because everything is done to make americans consume even more sweet fizzy drinks i would like a large a big a big coke so watch my water come that's mine so that's yours and here comes my water okay this is really small and your order is 24. okay okay thank you very much thank you um i can't have it as not you can keep refilling it as many times as you'd like that's the problem just keep filling it up if that if as if that's not enough for you come back and have some more you go yes do you have enough calories yet yeah no that's a half a liter it is so that's a half a liter um it's even more it's actually more like three quarters of a liter um the average american drinks 45 gallons of soda a year 45 gallons of soda a year is 42 pounds of sugar my son weighed about that when he was five years old so the average american is drinking a five-year-old's worth of soda a year it's a tsunami of of sugary drinks i think their only reason for doing that and i think their only reason for doing most anything is because it's good for their bottom line if you're drinking lots of it chances are you're going to want to drink lots of it next time too so it might be a bargain to buy 32 ounces of soda in a fast food restaurant but when you go out to the supermarket and you want to buy more um to bring home with you it's gonna cost you more so everything they do is about making more money again in some ways that's their job but this could be the first generation in modern history of kids in america that live shorter lives than their parents we need to find an alternative to all of this high fat high sugar food we need to our kids lives depend on it fifty years ago we drank four glasses of coke a year today sweetened drinks are gradually replacing water and milk sodas have even become the primary source of sugar and calories in the american diet [Music] a few months back a top specialist in obesity alerted the world according to dr lustig the sugar contained in soft drinks is quite simply a poison it is that can has 39 grams and it's four grams per teaspoon so basically this would have one five six seven eight there we go that's how much sugar is in this can absolutely no difference okay the reason why people can't stop drinking it is because the sugar is affecting that area of the brain making it very hard to quit and we have kids and adults for that matter who are true sugar addicts that it affects the reward center of the brain the same area that nicotine cocaine amphetamine uh heroin morphine etc all work on and it basically increases reward the problem is that the more reward the more of the neurotransmitter in the brain dopamine which conveys reward the more that system down regulates and therefore the more you have to consume in order to get the same effect the next time and that phenomenon is called tolerance and then if you withdraw that that's called withdrawal and you get physiologic symptoms and you put tolerance and withdrawal together and you have addiction and we now know that sugar does exactly the same thing as all of those substances of abuse although somewhat weaker what prison please don't forget terrible disastrous and we see it all the time in obesity clinic we measure plasma lipid levels and kids have lipid levels like you know 65 year olds all of the diseases of adulthood that we ascribe to getting older are now happening in children as early as age 8 to 10. it's a disaster type two diabetes we know is very specifically related to total sugar consumption and we have done that work here you look very angry against this industry i take care of obese children i take care of children who are going to die early they're going to lose 20 to 30 years of life they are also going to cost this country 192 billion dollars a year in lost revenue from decreased productivity there will be no health care by 2024 medicare will be broke i have a reason to be angry i'm a physician i'm supposed to be helping people i can't help them if the food industry hurts them yes i'm a little angry how many years of life do you lose from smoking two packs of cigarettes per day about 20. that's about the same if you'd consume two cans of soda per day so one coke who cares 10 000 cokes you're gonna die to get this message across to youngsters california is stepping up its public awareness campaign with some ads deliberately out to shock here are your sodas and here's your obesity your heart disease and your risk of stroke wait don't you want your diabetes faced with silence from coca-cola we wanted to get the views of the soft drink industry in general in sacramento we're about to meet its spokesman a lawyer who defends the interests of all soft drinks makers [Music] i don't think that consuming a soft drink as you said you like to do uh means that you're not gonna be that you're gonna eat uncontrollably or that you know it may not fill you up when you drink it but uh you should be aware that those are calories um and that you would adjust your your diet accordingly so um we don't encourage people to over consume sugar or anything else we don't think we i don't think we encourage people to over consume our product but we do believe that consuming soft drinks in moderation is perfectly healthy you know do we take responsibility for that i think we take responsibility for our product and for offering consumers a choice and variety um but i don't think that we take responsibility for obesity's existence no i i don't agree with that this is six seven ten ten spoons of sugar by cans okay do you still think that it's not it's not healthy it's healthy according to you i just want i mean yeah i think that we all make choices every day there are people who go in and have a latte with a dollop of whipped cream on top and add sugar to it and may have several of those a day that may have the same amount of sugar that's contained there um i think we need to be conscious of that and i think we need and i think the industry is doing a lot to make that even more apparent to people and i think that's the best answer to all this um do i think that's unhealthy no i don't think that's unhealthy if you're asking me to agree to that i don't think it's unhealthy and if you choose to avoid that there are beverages that do not contain everyone wants to know about diet sweeteners me too i want to know about diet sweeteners there's a problem we don't know anything about diet sweeteners how come we don't know anything we don't know what aspartame does to your long-term energy intake or resting energy expenditure or long you know downstream metabolic health we don't know any of those things we don't have any data and until we have data i can't say because i'm about the science so until we know that how can i say that diet sweeteners are the answer or not we don't know anything about diet sweeteners and until we do it will remain a mystery basically consumers have the choice of drinking sugar and being sure that with high doses it's dangerous or drinking diet sodas and being sure of nothing in either case there's one ingredient they can't avoid e150d better known as caramel coloring [Music] this is what gives colas their distinct colour a very controversial colour in california [Music] coca-cola and pepsi have even had to change their recipes in this state the scientist behind the latest uproar has arranged to meet us in this diner [Music] about five years ago it was demonstrated that caramel coloring contains a cancer-causing contaminant what coloring manufacturers do is take sugar add some ammonia add some acid and then put it under high pressure and that creates the caramel color but it also creates new chemicals one of the chemicals that forms is 4-methyl imidazole or am i but it was only a few years ago that studies were done that demonstrated that that chemical is a cancer-causing chemical in animals and probably in humans the state of california told the soft drink industry that they would have to put a cancer warning notice right on the label unless they got rid of that contaminant uh it's possible for leukemias are the the likeliest a few weeks back we asked mike jacobson to analyze some cans of coke we bought in france because the recipe clearly varies from country to country california's limit is 29 micrograms so this is 31's about the limit four is well underneath the limit and uh uh france uh regular coca-cola had 79 micrograms which is about more than twice the amount california would allow and the the two cans of light coke have more than three times as much california would require a warning notice it would state something like this product is known to the state of california to cause cancer in animals and that would not be very popular so far only california has targeted this chemical coloring in europe the health authorities don't seem that bothered on the american continent coca-cola is becoming more and more controversial due to another ingredient and not just any ingredient the main one water it takes three liters of water to make one liter of coca-cola in san cristobal in chapus there's no lack of water this region is mexico's reservoir heaven on earth for any soft drink maker so it's no surprise that in the 1980s the multinational decided to open one of its plants here um [Music] for hundreds of millions of liters of water coca-cola's main ingredient cost the company practically nothing antonino believes that the reason the us giant is so well treated in mexico is because of vincente fox the country's president until 2006. before being elected he was the ceo of coca-cola mexico coca-cola is using more and more water and recently water shortages have become more and more frequent [Music] [Music] the first families affected are in ocatel on the slopes of the volcano just above the coca-cola plant thomas is the leader of this small community he shares his home with nine other people for the last few years their daily life has been a nightmare foreign the water is being cut off for longer and longer periods so in octal they're happy when it rains foreign [Music] deprived of water in a region swimming in it the inhabitants of ocotal have asked coca-cola for an explanation but the multinational claims that there's no link between its intensive pumping of water and the shortages [Music] and to top it all when there's no water in the village the children drink soda it's a never-ending story the japanese indians are in a catch-22 situation [Music] perhaps this is why mexicans have become the world's biggest consumers of the beverage and chapus is breaking all records almost three cans per inhabitant a day if you want to drink something else around here there really is no choice marcus arana is a doctor he denounces the omnipresence of coca-cola a scourge that's hurting a whole country [Music] sounds a country repainted red and white the perfect financial model for coca-cola even in the remotest villages of chapas the multinational has deployed an unrivaled financial strategy is is yes [Music] the indians can no longer live without coca-cola the now all-powerful brand has even rested a place in their religion it has replaced posh the traditional drink of sacred rituals today this family is praying for this little boy who is sick they're offering to the gods seven bottles of coca-cola [Music] me in mexico 70 of the population is already overweight or obese according to the mexican health survey by 2020 it'll be 100 percent back to atlanta georgia today is coca-cola's big shindig the group's annual general assembly it's our last chance to get some explanations the event is shareholders only so we've bought two shares to get us in filming is off limits but we took the following footage from internet which coca-cola broadcasts for its shareholders worldwide ladies and gentlemen please welcome mootar kent in 2011 we increased our sparkling beverage portfolio by 4 and still beverage volume by 8 globally all told the coca-cola company your company generated 47 billion dollars of revenue last year the more people drink coke the bigger the profits and that's what shareholders like i may not be able to call on everyone who's here today with a question but i will give as many people as possible the chance the opportunity to speak the ceo of coca-cola will pick six shareholders randomly from the auditorium we get lucky i'm one of them hello mr chairman this is um olivia mitchelski hello mr chairman i travel from france to be here with you today and to have a chance to talk with you mr kent you are probably one of the few people in the world who may know watson cook consumers like me are not so lucky and have no idea what they are really drinking the little information we have on the recipe begs one question what are we drinking dear sir you want to make this world a better place so why for example do you use high fructose corn syrup a sweetener that independent and reputable researchers say it's dangerous for the health why do you use chemical caramel coloring when you could use a natural one why do you pump so much water in mexico and india when you could do something else or why do you not state that you still use the coca leaf in your recipe thank you very much sir for your attention thank you uh for for coming over from france to be at our annual general meeting um i will say to you standing up here that every one of our 3000 products is are good we are proud with the quality of every single one of our beverages we're proud with our standards that are in many cases above the standards of the countries in which we operate more stringent than many of the regulations in many environments in the world in two minutes and 15 seconds mutha kent has barely touched on our questions during that time his group has sold a further 3 million drinks worldwide [Applause] [Music] at the end of the general meeting we run into ray rogers the founder of killer coke like every year he's here to ask the atlanta giant some awkward questions and like every year he's gotten no answers so he's organized a protest outside coca-cola headquarters with a handful of people [Applause] this is the headquarters we're going to go in and we're going to talk to whoever's in charge let them know all right that's the private promise well i wish i owned this we all co-owners we're shareholders well i have an appointment who's your partner with with whoever's in charge no sir so we're gonna ask that you move are you on the sidewalk so back across the street there and i'm gonna ask the police officer to instruct you guys you have to move because they block the driver are you a shareholder uh no i'm not well i mean how does he have authority and we don't i mean i'm holding the main thing is we had the presence in the meeting and some people came out and said let's create a visual presence maybe some good photo shots to show that we are building something here in atlanta which is the home territory of the coca-cola company and as you saw there with some of the occupy atlanta people walking and saying we want a meeting well now they're saying we didn't get our meeting you're going to arrest us there's just a few of us so maybe we'll come back next year with several hundred people and it might make it a little more difficult to try to intimidate us so it's uh david versus goliath but there's uh lots of david's out there after a six-month investigation we have penetrated part of the mysterious recipe we have also discovered another facet of the coca-cola world one you never see in their ads a face hidden behind the myth of the secret formula a marketing of mystery that allows them not to answer the questions billions of consumers have the right to ask [Music] you

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Keywords: Free documentary, documentaries, full documentary, hd documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), Business Documentary, coca cola, coke, coca cola documentary, coke documentary, documentary about coke, documentary about coca cola, Coca-Cola Secret Formula, What's inside Coke, coke formula, coca cola formula

Id: cvcSneixc5k

Length: 51min 38sec (3098 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021