Even with vitamins, it's still soda

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For the first time in recent history, soda sales were down last year, so Coke and Pepsi have responded by trying to convince us that soda is health food.

What the . . .?

Regular Coke, Pepsi and all the various permutations still will be made of mostly sugar, artificial colors and aggressive marketing, but both companies are introducing diet brands with vitamins added.

Finally! I was getting so tired of dissolving Flintstones chewables in my Grape Fanta. Quite frankly, the Dinos never tasted quite right, no matter what I put them in, so I always had a jar of tiny, barking dinosaurs I couldn't figure out what to do with.

Diet Coke Plus, which will hit the stores any day now, has added niacin, vitamins B6 and B12, magnesium and zinc. Mmmmmm, magnesium. Good for your body and also makes a great flare (because it burns so brightly, silly).

Pepsi's entry in the vitamin-rich soda market will be called Tava, but you'll have to wait until the fall to enjoy the added vitamins B3, B6, E and chromium. Presumably, the new name and assorted flavors of Tava give PepsiCo the option of completely disavowing any knowledge of the product, and thus removing the taint of several studies linking soda consumption with obesity. There's your federal tax dollars at work. I wonder how much time and money went into figuring out that drinking sugar water makes you fat?

Actually, it looks like both companies aren't even going to market the new products as soda. They're avoiding the "S" word. Instead, they'll be calling their new products "sparkling beverages." OK, that's still an "S" word, but you get my point. I'm sure consumers will be completely fooled into believing that two products, Diet Coke and Diet Coke Plus, which look virtually the same, belong in completely different categories. I mean, gosh, the new product has a rainbow-colored "Plus" on it, so it couldn't possibly be a soda.

Coke and Pepsi are getting into the vitamin soda game late. Cadbury Schweppes, the makers of Diet Dr Pepper and various products with Schweppervesence, have had 7Up Plus for more than two years, and look how big that is. Yeah right, you had no idea it existed either.

Schweppes has backed off its claims of "100 percent natural" and replaced it with "naturally flavored." In fact, on its Web site, it's hard to figure out what the "Plus" is supposed to be. It's either fruit juice, calcium or Splenda. You're probably getting enough calcium just by drinking Las Vegas water (for those who do that) and 7Up Plus contains only 5 percent fruit juice. It's apple juice, by the way, although, according to the Web site, it's flavor-neutral.

(Fun fact: Johnny Appleseed was a real guy named John Chapman, who really did travel the country planting apple seeds. He was a peaceful, good-natured fellow, but you could set him off on an angry rant by referring to apples as "flavor-neutral.")

Drinking vitamin-enriched diet soda is better for you than drinking regular soda, but not nearly as good as drinking water and getting your vitamins from a healthy diet. Yeah, right, like that's going to happen.

Chances are, these products will be at least as popular as New Coke was. OK, that was needlessly cruel. They'll probably be big sellers, unless they make the huge mistake of adding vitamins by tossing in Dino chewables.

F. Andrew Taylor is a Las Vegas freelance writer. His column appears twice monthly. Contact him at fandrewt@cox.net.