"This American Life" Reveals Coca-Cola's Secret Recipe (Full Ingredient List)

"This American Life" says it has uncovered secret recipe for Coca-Cola.

/ istockphoto

(CBS) Has Coca-Cola finally been outed? A popular radio program has revealed what it says is the soda's long-guarded "secret recipe," and it's a complicated one.

Some ingredients listed by the producers at This American Life are familiar to anyone who's ever gazed at a can of Coke - water, sugar, citric acid, caramel, and so on. But who knew that Coke contains oil of nutmeg and orange?

Corinader oil? Neroli oil?

But whatever goes into a can of Coca-Cola to make it so tasty, health experts say there's no doubt what comes out of drinking too much sugar-sweetened soda:

Obesity.

"Soda is the single greatest source of sugar in the American diet," Dr. Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University, tells CBS News. "It's very highly associated with obesity."

The problem isn't just that the sugar in soda contains so many calories, she says, but that drinking sugary soda whets our appetite for sweet-tasting food - which only fuels our intake of calories.

Oh well. It's only Coke. Wanna brew up your own batch? Here is the ingredient list, as listed on the This American Life website:

Fluid extract of coca
Citric acid
Caffeine
Sugar
Water
Lime juice
Vanilla
Caramel
Alcohol
Orange oil
Lemon oil
Nutmeg oil
Coriander oil
Neroli oil
Cinnamon oil

[JohnnyW2001]

JABRUNA, this is a case of sloppy reporting by CBS (the shock!). The recipe uncovered by This American Life was never claimed to be today's recipe for Coke, but merely A recipe. As they stated in their press release:

"To be clear: We are not claiming that we have found the recipe used today for Coca-Cola. We believe we found a recipe that is either the original recipe made by the inventor of Coke, John Pemberton, or a version of Coca-Cola that he made either before or after the product hit the market in 1886. We believe that because it was found in the notebook of his friend, on a page entitled "Coco-Cola recipe improved," and because it was found in Pemberton's own notebook, in Coca-Cola's archives."

[jabruna]

I'm currently running studies on my own on coca-cola and I can assure you that there is more than this and some of these ingredients are not found in them.
Source
-Chemistry Ph.D