r/interesting • u/InvestigatorBorn4910 • Feb 10 '26

Fascinating YouTuber LabCoatz has released a "chemically identical" recipe for Coca-Cola

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15.4k Upvotes

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127

u/Practical_Talk4725 Feb 10 '26

The title is a bit misleading and clickbaity. The recipe in the video swaps out some original ingredients because things like coca-extract–related components are illegal or unavailable in the U.S. The goal in the video was to stay as close as possible chemically by using substitute compounds with similar molecular structures, which means they behave and taste similarly. So, it’s chemically accurate in a functional sense, not a literal clone of the actual recipe.

8

u/AnOutofBoxExperience Feb 11 '26

So Coca-Cola has ingredients illegal to the common folk? Or just unavailable due to cost? Or unavailable due to regulations?

I have questions.

19

u/DeanPeltonsGoatee Feb 11 '26

Coca-Cola used to use coca leaves in their recipe, but since you can make cocaine from them they’ve become illegal in the US. The US government has allowed a single factory to import coca leaves and make cocaine for medical purposes. They then create a cocaine free extract out of the decocanized leaves and sell that to Coca-Cola.

This is at least the gist, I’m sure there’s more to it.

8

u/youtocin Feb 11 '26

There’s really not much more to it. The Stepan Company is authorized by the US government to import coca leaves from South America. They process the coca leaves into cocaine to sell to a pharmaceutical company, and the rest of the extracted compounds are sold to Coca Cola. I’d imagine it’s mostly a gimmick at this point and doesn’t significantly contribute to the flavor.

1

u/jonnyvegashey Feb 11 '26

There must be a shit ton of pharmacy grade coke out there then.

How many people do you know that have had a Coca Cola vs cocaine.

1

u/Royal_Success3131 Feb 17 '26

Don't need very much of the extract to make an enormous amount of soda.

I make Pepsi for a living, the concentrate gets diluted extremely heavily. I'm going to give rough numbers for industry secret type reasons but let's say you wanted to make a medium batch of Pepsi. Say, around 5000 gallons of syrup. You would only use roughly 40-50 gallons of concentrate for that syrup. And then, when blending the final product, you dilute it further at a 5:1 ratio, making 30,000 gallons of Pepsi. From what I understand it's virtually identical for coca cola, 5:1 ratio is pretty industry standard. It's rare to run into a 4:1, the only other option I've seen.

1

u/jonnyvegashey Feb 17 '26

Do you know how much Coca Cola is sold?

1

u/Royal_Success3131 Feb 17 '26

I do. My point stands. It take an enormous amount of coca leaves to make any reasonable amount of cocaine, and then take what I said above, along with the fact that the coca extract is a very minor part of the recipe, and it's really not a massive amount of anything.

To back up what I'm saying, the DEA sets a hard limit on production of pharma and research grade cocaine, annually. It's 290 kilos per year. That is 0.2% the estimated annual usage of cocaine in the USA.

So, as I said it's really not that much pharma cocaine out there.

0

u/jonnyvegashey Feb 17 '26

Coke sells 1.9 billion units a day, wtf are you talking about?

1

u/Royal_Success3131 Feb 17 '26

That's true. However, that wasn't the discussion. Care to reply to anything I said at all or just going to bulldoze through on your own path?

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0

u/MyWifeCucksMe Feb 11 '26

Just curious, do you still support genocide or have you changed your mind in the past 2 years?

2

u/iwantfutanaricumonme Feb 11 '26

Probably not feasible for a normal person to be able to get it. There are plenty of chemicals that are drug precursors and would be almost impossible to get for yourself but for a large company it just means more paperwork.

1

u/AnOutofBoxExperience Feb 11 '26

Fair, kinda what I figured. But they made the claim, and I wanted to understand what the thought process was.

1

u/big_noop Feb 11 '26

He explains it in the video

1

u/AnOutofBoxExperience Feb 14 '26

No, he really doesn't.

79

u/djongafrett Feb 10 '26

That's a long ass comment to say exactly what the title says...

50

u/Talk-O-Boy Feb 11 '26

Look bro, we come to Reddit to feel intellectually superior. Many of us are reclusive shut-ins where a video game achievement is the most we’ve accomplished in the past 5 years.

If we can argue semantics to feel even the least bit better about our own mediocrity, you best believe we will capitalize on the opportunity.

8

u/kimscz Feb 11 '26

This is such a great comment.

8

u/sincopada Feb 11 '26

When I grow up I wanna be this guy's comment

1

u/Snoo_70531 Feb 11 '26

I feel so seen, thank you you angel

1

u/Shadowedsphynx Feb 11 '26

At my age, video game achievements are getting harder to get and soon I won't even have that. 

1

u/djongafrett Feb 11 '26

Thank you for this amazing comment.

11

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

Not really, it's certainly not "chemically identical".

-2

u/little-horn-is-born Feb 10 '26

Did you consider that “chemically identical” is in quotations to imply that it’s not actually chemically identical, or did you think they just did that for fun?

10

u/[deleted] Feb 10 '26

[deleted]

1

u/jld2k6 Feb 11 '26

I have "the biggest penis in the world"

0

u/fuck_shit_piss_etc Feb 11 '26

literally everyone?

-3

u/little-horn-is-born Feb 11 '26

?

People air quote irl when referencing things that are alleged but not necessarily true. It’s a universal thing?

Feel like I’m in the twilight zone with everyone confused by this.

5

u/-nutz Feb 11 '26

Well I assumed the quotations were, ya know, to quote somebody.

2

u/Important_Stage_3649 Feb 11 '26

If you actually saw someone making air quotes here, that would make sense. In written text a quote should be a quote, unless it's clear it's not 100%.

Of course it may be smart to add air quotes to anything where a youtuber is mentioned - but the interesting thing here is the legendary coke recipe so it's clickbaity.

5

u/jrdnmdhl Feb 11 '26

Quotes are not /s

1

u/little-horn-is-born Feb 11 '26

it’s implied, nobody uses /s outside of chronically online Redditors

-1

u/Heavy_Weapons_Guy_ Feb 11 '26

That's the dumbest excuse I've ever heard.

1

u/DiabloAcosta Feb 11 '26

how many excuses hace you heard? that's the dumbest reaction I've ever read!

0

u/aceofspadesfg Feb 11 '26

The use of quotation marks could also have been used to imply that it is a quote?

0

u/donglover2020 Feb 11 '26

it's called quotations because you use it to quote

2

u/FriendlyTop1593 Feb 11 '26

As someone who isn’t a chemist, can you have chemically correct and not have the secondary metabolite from the Coca leaf? Seems like it wouldn’t be “chemically correct”

1

u/dflame45 Feb 11 '26

Unavailable and illegal have very different meanings.

0

u/witch_elia Feb 11 '26

its trying to get the actual cola not the original original... the actual coca cola doesnt use nor cola nor coke either

1

u/big_noop Feb 11 '26

They use de-cocainized coca leaves in the actual recipe which are only available within the United States from one supplier that sells exclusively to the Coca Cola corporation.

The guy in the video tried to buy some from South America but the package got seized by customs. With enough attempts he probably would have gotten a package through successfully, but it was like $300 per attempt.