h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Does Coca-cola (coke for america) really contains cocain?
That question has been buging me for a while, 'cuz I'm a cola addict...

A12590327

The short answer is "not any more."

Ok!Thanks!
Now i can drink in peace.

If you don't mind phosphoric acid, and sugar excess - alternatively peptid sweetener or even scarier chlorinated sugar (compare ddt)...




(OK, I admit to having a glass now and then, but the family limit is perhaps 1.5 liters in two months...)

Why would comparing ddt to a chlorinated sugar mean anything?

DDT is a chlorinated carbohydrate, and so is sucralose. DDT was once the blessing against insects, but was found to be not so healthy. Sucralose isn't digested like sugar (so Zero calories...), but I'm not sure it's healthy either.

But I may be wrong on the details. Sugar is a carbohydrate, DDT more a hydrocarbon. Chloro-organic stuff isn't usually good news in my ears anyway.

Sorry but none of that means anything.

Lots of organic chemicals have chlorine in them, it doesn't make them nasty. There are lots and lots of perfectly natural chemicals that also contain chlorine. Some are nasty, some are not.

There are also lots of very nasty organic chemicals that do not contain chlorine, both natural and unnatural.

Also DDT is an utterly different type of chemical to sucralose. You might as well say that DNA and proteins are the same thing as they contain carbon, oxygen and nitrogen.
Pharmacologically they are about as similar as a beetle is to a cheesburger.

Medicinal chemists spend years making very subtle changes to biologically active molecules and these changes often totally inactivate the chemical or make it into something with completely different biological effect. Similarity of structure does not mean similarity of function.
And the two molecules you mentioned, as I've already said, are not even similar!

DDT is a type of compound that is what we call aromatic - that makes it a much different type of chemical to sucralose.

Sorry but as a chemist who actually knows something about these things, comments like that bug me as people who don't know about chemistry so much get misled by those who've not a clue about what they are talking.
There is next to no evidence that sucralose is in any way dangerous and in order for it to be approved an awful lot of work (millions and millions of pounds worth of work) was done to show this.

Thanks. I admit to not knowing as much as I ought about this, and am happy to learn. To me, it just felt like a new thing that was chlorinated, and it didn't sound like a good thing. I'll stick to regular sugar anyway, if it's ok...

Well who am I to dictate? Of course it is.

Being chlorinated is not a bad thing in itself in organic molecules but chlorinated aromatic chemicals like DDT and PCBs can be a problem *if* they are toxic (and the one does not necessarily follow the other) since they are slow to break down in nature and thus can accumulate.