Ra 4 Food - Health and Nutritional Tips

Brace yourself for this new wild and wacky invention from Coca-Cola – its wait for it… fizzy milk! Eugh, makes your stomach turn just thinking about it don’t you think? So, what’s the bright thinking behind this seemingly featherbrained idea?

Well, first of all, the drink is going to consist of skimmed milk, sparkling water, fruit flavourings and sweetness from cane sugar. Mmm, interested yet?

Well fear not, as we have assurances from scientists at the drinks giant’s Atlanta headquarters, that the new concoction will not curdle as it will be housed in an 8oz aluminium bottle.

Coca-Cola have given the new drink the name Vio (catchy aye) and had already got under way testing its popularity out on punters shopping at posh natural food stores and New York delis. It retails for around £1.50 per bottle and does not need to be kept cold. One of Coke’s clever copywriters described the drink as tasting ““like a birthday party for a polar bear”.

At the moment the drink comes in four “natural” flavours (not sure there is anything too natural about gas and milk together but ok) – peach mango, berry, citrus and tropical colada – and surprise surprise, clever marketing looks set to try and palm this stuff off as a healthy nutritional drink. Hmm, except that actually it is packed full with teaspoons of sugar – 26g per bottle – about the same as other non-diet Coke products in fact.

A taste tester for BevNET.com, a research site for the drinks industry, said this about the citrus version,

“It’s big on milk flavour and, as a result, has a somewhat creamy body. It didn’t seem sweet until you consumed almost a whole bottle.”

The drink is one of the first in a series of milk based products being developed by the company as part of a project called Project Life. If  there is a positive reaction to the drink the US, then we could all be lucky enough to get our lips around it soon as it launches internationally.

Coca-Cola GB  advised no British version of the unusual drink was in the pipeline as yet added, “We are constantly listening to consumers.”

David Jago, director of insight and innovation at Mintel, the consumer research firm, said, “I suspect it is a bit of a novelty. British people will expect a milk drink to be chilled and will be suspicious if they see it on the shelves.”

However dairy farmers are posititive about the new drink with hopes it could give the industry a much needed boost.

David Cotton, vice-chairman of the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers, said, “Anything that helps to sell milk is great. If Coca-Cola want to market fizzy milk and give us the odd shilling, we would be very happy.”