Here's What's Wrong With That Viral Coca-Cola Graphic

Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.

An infographic about the health effects of a single can of Coke has been going viral today. But there's a lot about it that doesn't necessarily check out.

This infographic creator, identified as Niraj Naik by the Daily Mail, first published it on the blog The Renegade Pharmacist. He writes in his blog post that the information in the infographic comes from a post published on Blisstree.

BuzzFeed Life reached out to several experts to fact-check some of the claims.

therenegadepharmacist.com

First, the points about sugar either don't check out, or get the science confused.

For the sugar facts, BuzzFeed Life reached out to Kimber Stanhope, Ph.D., RD, an associate research nutritional biologist for the University of California Davis department of molecular biosciences. Stanhope does research on the effect sugar consumption has on the body.

Scott Olson / Getty Images

Here's what it says:
10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system. (100% of your recommended daily intake.) You don't immediately vomit from the overwhelming sweetness because phosphoric acid cuts the flavor allowing you to keep it down.

Here's the truth:
"This statement is not true," Stanhope said. "By far the majority of people have no trouble consuming 10 teaspoons of sugar-sweetened beverage. We have studied 100s of participants in our studies who consumed beverages that contained more than 10 teaspoons of sugar, but no phosphoric acid. Not one ever vomited due to the sweetness, and I don't remember any of them ever reporting that they felt nauseated due to the sweetness."

Here's what it says:
20 minutes in: Your blood sugar spikes, causing an insulin burst. Your liver responds to this by turning any sugar it can get its hands on into fat. (There's plenty of that at this particular moment)

Here's the truth:
It's not the insulin spike that's the problem, according to Stanhope's research. Basically, the fat production has to do with how the liver metabolizes fructose...and not the increased levels of insulin. She sums it up: "Insulin spikes following consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages are not the main cause of the fat-making in the liver." Here's a scientific paper she published that goes into it, if you're curious.

Naik's blog post actually addresses the issue of fructose in sugar-sweetened drinks; it's the attached infographic that focuses incorrectly on insulin.

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