Coke Zero: Chavez Not Crazy This Time?

Venezuela’s health minister ordered a halt to Coke Zero production last week, in order to “preserve the health of Venezuelans.” At the time, no specific reason was cited, which made it look like just another crazy move by Hugo Chavez‘ government to thwart capitalism in an arbitrary manner.

But now that the Venezuelan Health Ministry has gotten more specific, it doesn’t seem so crazy after all. Apparently the controversy is over the zero-calorie sweetener sodium cyclamate, which may or may not be harmful to human health. The U.S. prohibits sodium cyclamate in food products, and in 2008, protests by consumer advocates in Mexico led the Coca-Cola Company to remove the ingredient from Coke Zero there as well.

I have no idea whether sodium cyclamate is actually a health risk; that’s not the issue. Venezuela isn’t even claiming that’s the issue; sodium cyclamate is legal in Venezuela. The problem is that the Coca-Cola Company never declared the ingredient when it got permission to produce Coke Zero in Venezuela.

Coca-Cola still says Venezuelan Coke Zero doesn’t contain sodium cyclamate; it has aspartame and/or acesulfame-K. Tests by the Venezuelan government, however, showed that Coke Zero there does, in fact, contain sodium cyclamate.

Coca-Cola responded by telling AP that “no ingredient of Coca-Cola Zero is harmful to peoples’ health.” Which is not the same as saying that the product does not contain undeclared sodium cyclamate. So I’m thinking at the very least, it might not be a wholly unreasonable move on Venezuela’s part to want to investigate the issue.

Bias Disclosure/Miscellaneous Tangent:

I admit to an instinct to want to defend Chavez and Venezuela — not because I think he’s terrific, but because I think he’s treated unfairly in the media. The world is full of imperfect leaders, many of them much worse than Chavez, and whatever you think of his philosophy and policies, Chavez was, in fact, democratically elected.

However, I have also had the misfortune of hearing him speak, and I think that’s secretly the real reason journalists hate him. It’s not his politics. It’s the fact that he doesn’t shut up. When I saw him in Argentina at the inauguration of President Christina Kirchner, he went on for nearly three hours and said absolutely nothing of substance. Those spicy, pithy quotes about how Bush is the Devil and the U.S. is an evil empire? Culled from hours and hours of painful babble, most of it so rambling you can’t even pull a grammatically sound sentence out of it. Seriously.