Health Insurance Blog

Coke's Enviga: Burning Calories By Drinking?

Nice try Coke! But if any overweight people wants to solely relying on tis type of drinks to return to normal weight, it might be too cost prohibitive.

A soft drink that burns calories? Coca-Cola Co. has just introduced one. But don't throw away your Weight Watchers plan.

In a conference call this week, the Atlanta beverage giant unveiled plans to launch Enviga, a sparkling green tea-based soft drink infused with a tantalizing claim: Consume three 12-ounce cans of Enviga over a 24-hour period, and a healthy person of normal weight can burn anywhere from 60 to 100 additional calories. Coke developed the beverage in partnership with Nestlé SA.

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Assuming the calorie-burning benefit is real, Enviga raises another question: Is it worth the $1.29 to $1.49 price of a 12-ounce can? Assuming a 60-calorie loss from three cans of the drink, a person would have to drink more than five cans a day of Enviga, at a cost of $6.45 or more, to burn the number of calories found in two Oreos. A brisk 15-minute walk would do the same trick. To accomplish a more substantial health benefit -- such as erasing the effects of a McDonald's Big Mac -- a person would need to drink about 28 cans of Enviga, at a cost of $36 or more.

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Rhona Applebaum, Coke's chief scientist, agrees that the new drink is not a diet pill. "This is not a magic bullet," she says. Enviga should be consumed as part of a healthy diet and regular physical activity, she says. Enviga "gently invigorates your metabolism. It gives your body this extra boost."