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26 Dec and 12 Nov 2008

Born today in 1753: Marie Josephine Louise of Savoy, Consort of Louis XVIII of France

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I think I’m coming down with pellagra. Please pass me the Coke.

December 26th, 2008

There’s been a recent flap about the FDA cracking down on Diet Coke Plus™, charging that its nutrient fortifications aren’t high enough to merit legally the “Plus” in its name and re-emphasizing that the administration doesn’t consider it appropriate to add such things to snack foods in the first place.

Let’s take a look at the ingredients of Diet Coke Plus to see exactly what we’re getting:

Carbonated water
Magnesium sulfate (i.e., Epsom salt)
Caramel color
Phosphoric acid (adds tanginess)
Potassium sorbate (preservative)
Potassium benzoate (preservative)
Aspartame (artificial sweetener)
Natural flavors, something along the lines of:
     Cinnamon oil
     Coriander oil
     Lemon oil
     Lime oil
     Neroli oil
     Nutmeg oil
     Orange oil
     Vanilla extract
Acesulfame potassium (artificial sweetener)
Caffeine
Zinc gluconate
Vitamin B3 (Niacin)
Vitamin B6
Vitamin B12

Now here’s a more precise listing of the drink’s added nutrients. The RDA stands for Required Daily Allowance of that nutrient¹, the next column is the upper safe limit ², and the next is the ratio of the two (“therapeutic ratio”) which gives a rough idea of the safety margin. I then compare the actual amount of each of these in the drink with the daily dosage you might find in a health store product.

Nutrient	A: RDA	B: Upper safe limit	Ratio of B/A	Total in 20 oz. bottle of Diet Coke Plus	Typical supplement dosage
B-3	16 mg	35 mg	2.2	15% RDA or 2.4 mg	500 mg
B-6	1.3 mg	100 mg	77	15% RDA or 0.2 mg	50 mg
B-12	2.4 μg	∞	∞	15% RDA or 0.36 μg	500-1000 μg
Magnesium	420 mg	350 mg (!)	0.83	10% RDA or 42 mg	400 mg
Zinc	11 mg	40 mg	3.6	10% RDA or 1.1 mg	30 mg

As you can see, Diet Coke Plus’s nutritional assets are pretty scant. In addition, B-12 is a rather persnickety animal that doesn’t tolerate stomach acids very well. Consequently most vitamin B-12 supplements come in the form of sub-lingual lozenges, mouth sprays, or enteric tablets.

Magnesium would appear to have an alarmingly low therapeutic ratio, though as it happens most people’s kidneys will filter out any excess. Those whose kidneys are in any way compromised wouldn’t want to go anywhere near this stuff without professional medical advice.

Manufacturers like Coca-Cola are in a bind when it comes to marketing nutritionally fortified snack foods, FDA or no FDA. If they put enough of these goodies into the product to make any real impact on anyone’s health, there’s the risk that such quantities might at the same time endanger some of their consumers who have various pre-existing conditions or take medications that might react adversely.

It would also cost so much that hardly anyone would buy it.

Castle or Corman?

November 12th, 2008

William Castle (1914-1977) and Roger Corman (b. 1926) are known for their [usually] low-budget, [usually] high concept movies.

Castle typically incorporated some kind of gimmick into his pictures — joy buzzers installed into selected seats, nurses stationed in the lobby, a magic coin, a 45-second “fright break” timer overlaid onto the screen, burial insurance for patrons who might die of shock, and so forth.

Corman is probably best known for 1960’s Little Shop of Horrors which featured a human-eating plant and Jack Nicholson as a masochistic dental patient. It went on to spawn a stage musical — which itself then ricocheted back into yet another movie, directed by John Waters (who himself grew up as a Castle zealot).

Naturally Vincent Price saw plenty of action with both Castle and Corman. He plays child-killing Richard III in Tower of London, and in The Tingler he exhorts us to “Scream! Scream for your lives!!”

In The Thing With Two Heads, Ray Milland is a cantankerous and openly racist physician who, as a consequence of multiple organ failure, has to have his head grafted onto the body of a black death row inmate played by Rosie Greer. Much of the film consists of this bizarre Milland-Greer “Thing” racing around the countryside on a minibike.

The one A-list picture in this glorious morass was Rosemary’s Baby, produced by William Castle and directed by a new Polish kid hardly anybody had then heard of named Roman Polanski. Castle himself appears in a cameo as the man waiting for Mia Farrow to get off a pay phone.

Let’s see if you can tell some of the pictures of William Castle and Roger Corman apart:

1. 13 Frightened Girls (banned in Finland)
2. Attack of the Crab Monsters
3. House on Haunted Hill
4. Let’s Kill Uncle
5. Not of This Earth
6. The Thing With Two Heads
7. The Tingler
8. X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
9. Tower of London
10. Zotz!

Highlight the answers below with your cursor:

1. Castle
2. Corman [starring Russell Johnson]
3. Castle [starring Vincent Price]
4. Castle [starring Nigel Bruce]
5. Corman [starring Beverly Garland]
6. Corman (producer)
7. Castle [starring Vincent Price]
8. Corman [starring Ray Milland]
9. Corman [starring Vincent Price]
10. Castle [starring Tom Poston]
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