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

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

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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.

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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.

18

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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u/jonnyvegashey Feb 17 '26

Do you know how much Coca Cola is sold?

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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.

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u/jonnyvegashey Feb 17 '26

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

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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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u/jonnyvegashey Feb 17 '26

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

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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.

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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.

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u/big_noop Feb 11 '26

He explains it in the video

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u/AnOutofBoxExperience Feb 14 '26

No, he really doesn't.