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A plot to steal the secret Coke can-liner formula
- malshe 3y agohttps://archive.ph/BcKpa https://archive.ph/BcKpa
- PaulHoule 3y agoSee https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xIVONw9Pr4w https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xIVONw9Pr4w
- scotty79 3y agoHow can something that has contact with food be allowed to be secret?
- progbits 3y agoThe drink itself is secret
- hulitu 3y agoOf course they are. (Coca cola tastes different in every country, and it is basically, sweetened water with no trace of coca)
- somecommit 3y agoThe natural extract is the secret and always imported from the US, but the variations are in the water and also the sugar syrup used, it depends the location in the world (source: I visited a factory once)
- astrange 3y agoYou can go to World of Coca Cola in Atlanta and try them all. I'm told the Beverly is especially memorable.
- WithinReason 3y agoIt uses 100 metric tons of coca leaves each year: https://www.naturalnews.com/032658_Coca-Cola_cocaine.html https://www.naturalnews.com/032658_Coca-Cola_cocaine.html
- nly 3y agoProbably just doing that so they can maintain their exclusive right to import it legally.
- herbst 3y agoIt's not the only company doing that. In Italy you get a amazing liquor named 'Coca Buton' that imports and processes cocoa leafs to Italy. As far as I know the only European company that is allowed to do that. And I swear that drink does still contain some alkaloid magic, even thought there obviously is no cocaine in it.
- dx034 3y agoThe materials used don't have to be secret, often it's the way to manufacture that's kept secret. It's similar with banknotes. The materials used is public knowledge (and parts of it patented), but manufacturing is a secret to avoid counterfeiting.
- scotty79 3y agoMaterials used in manufacturing can contaminate the product.
- irjustin 3y agoThe end result is testable
- closewith 3y agoThat's true in the least helpful sense. We only know a subset of potential problems when it comes to food contamination and certainly don't test for all of even those. We naturally have no idea about the effects of yet undiscovered contaminants.
- biogene 3y agoYou can do generic tests like testing for toxicity, but that won't give you the full picture. If you don't have a list of all the input raw materials, intermediates, by-products, impurities, surface materials that can leech into the final product, etc; you can't test for them.
- beardedwizard 3y ago[flagged]
- hkt 3y agoThat's an intensely creepy thing to say.
- beardedwizard 3y agoCatching criminals is creepy? Hmmm...... strange virtue signal. agree to completely disagree. I work in infosec and we partner with the FBI on corporate espionage. We take it very seriously, and they always get caught.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Xenoamorphous 3y ago> she was one of only two people at Coke with access to many of the specifics. You would think a huge company like this would’t run the risk of laying off one of these people.
- asddubs 3y agowell, it seems that it was info that coke didn't actually really personally need, and ultimately also not their loss if it was leaked. They probably just thought she was a liability
- seszett 3y agoShe used her position at Coca-Cola to steal other companies information. The headline is a bit sensationalised and the lining formula isn't actually Coca-Cola's "secret formula", it's just a coating company's formula (Akzo Nobel N.V if I understand correctly, but she tried with multiple other suppliers). That's why I found it weird at first, so many companies produce aluminium cans and beverages for aluminium cans that Coca-Cola itself couldn't have been the one holder of some special secret coating formula. But the importance of Coca-Cola did help her get leverage to obtain the coating formula from Akzo Nobel.
- londons_explore 3y agoAs long as Coca-Cola has decent evidence that is was never company policy nor management decision to steal suppliers formulas, they will probably get away without financial penalty.
- jansan 3y agoOoh, another secret formula story from Coca-Cola. They are awesome at marketing, how else can you explain that people choose their products which are twice or three times as expensive as competing products sitting next to it on the shelf which in many cases, at least according to my children, even taste better.
- saiya-jin 3y agoForget marketing, every single product of this company slowly kills tens of millions, while supporting and increasing sugar addiction worldwide. A pure net loss for humanity. I dont see that much difference compared to tobacco industry, same fuck-them-all mindset. But I guess if you cant show story with kids blown to pieces or similar level of abhorrent immediate effect its all a-OK.
- stOneskull 3y agonot to mention the caffeine. coke's so bad for kids. give them juice or milk instead.
- stephen_g 3y agoFruit juice is hardly better. A glass of, say, apple juice has several apples worth of sugar but much less than a single apple’s worth of dietary fibre.
- stOneskull 3y agoorange juice with pulp in it, watermelon and carrot, you can even sneak spinach in.. no, worst case of juice isn't good either
- jansan 3y agoThat's why there is "Apfelschorle" (mix of apple juice with sparkling water). Germans drink this is huge quantities.
- malablaster 3y ago
- Simon_O_Rourke 3y agoA pal of mine is a chemical engineer who's main job is designing the pipework for plants in the pharma and food sectors. They opened up a new Coke manufacturing facility a few years back and he was able to make a stab at the list of specific ingredients based off their stated viscosity, boiling temperature and Reynolds number.
- londons_explore 3y agoThe major ingredients, like sugar, water, CO2 are the main ones that affect the design of a processing factory. Yet the flavourings are the ones that will be organic molecules in tiny concentrations, not affecting the design of processing plants, yet very important for anyone wanting to copy the flavor.
- teh_klev 3y agoYour comment about your pal just reminded me of "The Integral Principles of the Structural Dynamics of Flow", an fictional technical book used as a plot device in the Patriot TV series. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4687882 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4687882 They even created a one season podcast read by the fictional author, Leslie G Claret, who's played by the actor Kurtwood Smith. Does your pal really work as a chemical engineer ;)
- supertimor 3y ago“A little something like this, John. Let me walk you through our Donnelly nuts basing and crack system rim-riding grip configuration. Using a field of half C sprats, and brass fitted nickle slits, our bracketed caps and splay flexed brace columns vent dampers to dampening hatch depths of one half meter from the damper crown to the spur plyths. How? Well, we bolster 12 husked nuts to each girdle jerry, while flex tandems press a task apparatus of ten, vertically composited patch hamplers. Then, pin flam fasten pan traps at both maiden apexes of the jim joints. A little something like that, Lakeman.” Love this show! Cleverly written and incredibly underrated.
- girvo 3y agoWhile I'm not sure I have much sympathy for her, at the end of the day these were her choices (and she makes a pretty terrible criminal at the end of the day), it is interesting to me that she was handed a rather large 14 year sentence, despite not actually giving the illegal trade secrets and data to anyone else.
- ahoka 3y agoIf a corporation indirectly kills millions, then no one is accountable, but try to steal from them and you end up in prison.
- gruez 3y agoThe key word here is "indirectly". You can get away with killing people too, if you do it by a traffic accident for instance.
- simplyskeptic 3y agoWhat he's talking about isn't something they do by accident.
- jiofj 3y ago[flagged]
- gruez 3y agoEvery mile of you driving causes a non-zero amount of risk of injury to other road users. The specific crash might be "accidental", but by driving you're making a conscious choice to cause harm to other people.
- phs318u 3y agoIf you take this argument to its absurd conclusion, one could argue that by merely living, I'm making a conscious choice to harm other people.
- malablaster 3y agoWho else feels embarrassed for her daughter?
- flutas 3y agoI'd personally be extremely shocked if it hasn't affected her daughters career + prospects at all. Essentially her mother "poisoned the well" in my mind. I really hope it hasn't though.
- sverhagen 3y agoI have heard before about BPAs being bad, but it made me kinda chuckle that increasing the risk of diabetes was mentioned, while this story is about Coke. Thank goodness, the liner won't give you diabetes no more.
- londons_explore 3y agoThe fact that coke was sufficiently worried about a 2um thick layer on the inside of their cans that they decided to do what appears to be an emergency formula change tells me that management probably has data showing BPA to be really bad (and therefore a risk to their business if everyone with infertility, obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer sues them)
- seszett 3y ago> coke was sufficiently worried about a 2um thick layer Whether they were worried themselves or not is not what made them change, French law (then followed by the rest of the EU, California and China) was the reason.
- dylan604 3y agoOnce you have to put the dreaded "Known to the state of California" label, it's all down hill
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> Aluminum beverage cans are particularly tricky. The biggest factories stamp out 16 million cans a day; each requires a perfectly uniform inner coating, sprayed on in seconds. The liner recipes are calibrated to the recipes of the drinks, with their different levels of acidity, sugar, caffeine, oils and, in some cases, alcohol. The polymer, once dried, can’t react in any way with the beverage, even after months on a supermarket shelf, lest the precisely calibrated flavor profile of a Topo Chico strawberry hibiscus hard seltzer or a Monster Assault energy drink be corrupted. > All that complexity lends the industry a deep resistance to change. But You arrived at Coke at a rare moment of disruption, caused by concerns about a ubiquitous liner ingredient called bisphenol A, or BPA. A growing, if not unanimous, body of research has suggested that BPA can interfere with the body’s endocrine system, increasing the risk of a host of health problems including Type 2 diabetes and accelerated puberty. In 2010, France banned BPA in baby bottles, later expanding the ban to include any food packaging sold in the country. If it doesn't react with the beverage... what's the issue supposed to be?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- seszett 3y ago> If it doesn't react with the beverage... what's the issue supposed to be? BPA doesn't react with the beverage, but it does dissolve in it in small quantities, and although it's not acutely toxic it has biological effects even in small quantities as it (imperfectly) mimics estrogen.
- londons_explore 3y ago> 'accelerated puberty' > "at the turn of the 20th century, the average age for an American girl to get her period was 16 or 17. Today, that number has decreased to 12 or 13 years." -- Hector O. Chapa, MD, FACOG, clinical assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Texas A&M College of Medicine As a government, I would be really worried about such a change in my population, especially if I didn't understand the exact cause. Previously the age of marriage was mostly based on this puberty age - if societal norms change and 12 year olds start having babies, that will be a huge impact on the economic outlook of the country.
- al_be_back 3y agoBloomberg Originals has a ~7min video-doc on it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8ojlJoM0FE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8ojlJoM0FE
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> In a text to Fan, Liu defended himself How is the American court getting access to messages sent from one Chinese person in China to another Chinese person in China?
- londons_explore 3y agoI assume a phone copy done at a border checkpoint. Chinese apps tend to not encrypt anything stored on device, and while android itself supports full device encryption it tends to be disabled on China models, or if it is enabled it is just the users 4 digit pin that protects the key, with no secure processor to prevent just trying every pin.
- thaumasiotes 3y agoThe article does not suggest that either of those people ever traveled to the United States. (It says this instead: (Like Liu, Fan presumably remains in China, beyond the reach of US law enforcement.)) It does say that Liu went to Italy... but it doesn't mention anything unusual happening at the border there. Phone confiscation is not a routine border-crossing event.
- asddubs 3y agomight have been a screenshot of the conversation sent to Shannon You
- flutas 3y agoThe article did mention they had a WeChat clone from her phone, could it have been a group chat from them? (I don't know if WeChat even has that option.)
- thaumasiotes 3y agoWeChat does have group chats, so that's a thing that could happen. It doesn't seem plausible for this particular message, since Liu is defending himself to Fan against accusations from You. If that message went straight to You (in a group chat with Fan), I would expect it to be described differently.
- methou 3y agoThere's whole bunch of people making awesome craft drinks as a hobby, and lots of them own YouTube. If you are upset with coke, you can find some of these quite interesting!
- TowerTall 3y ago> The liner recipes are calibrated to the recipes of the drinks, with their different levels of acidity, sugar, caffeine, oils and, in some cases, alcohol. The polymer, once dried, can’t react in any way with the beverage, even after months on a supermarket shelf, lest the precisely calibrated flavor profile of a Topo Chico strawberry hibiscus hard seltzer or a Monster Assault energy drink be corrupted. I have always believe that this the reason why coke from a plastic bottle tastes different that one from a metal can or glass bottle. Personally I try to stay clear of the plastic bottle as I find that can/glass taste better.
- bluejekyll 3y agoBy metal can, I think you mean aluminum cans. It turns out those are lined with plastic as well.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jlokier 3y agoSome articles say it's reaction with the plastic. But others, and an interview I heard once with someone from Coca-Cola, say it's because plastic bottles are more permeable to CO₂ gas than glass bottles or metal cans. That is, they leak fizz faster. So more CO₂ is added to the plastic bottle version of the drink to ensure it stays fizzy over its shelf life. This excess CO₂ (which is carbonic acid H₂CO₃ when dissolved in water) changes the taste slightly.
- ec109685 3y agoAmazing that it took a few weeks to realize she could take pictures of her screen. Good old analog loophole to DLP (and copyright protection [except when it comes to duplicating dollar bills]).
- r3trohack3r 3y ago> Shannon You in particular had access to some of the most closely held information at the company: a set of detailed chemical recipes for the 2-micron-thick plastic liners inside the beverage cans Coke filled and sold. A federal prosecutor would later describe these as the company’s “other secret formulas.” Developed at great expense, they were likely even more important than the theatrically guarded recipe for Coke’s namesake soft drink—that sugary, acidic brew would, without a liner, devour the metal of its can. Soda cans have a mm thin coating that I already knew about. But my big takeaway from this article: That coating is non-trivial to get right and, if gotten wrong, will react with the beverage inside the can. It’s surprising to me that regulators allow this to be kept a trade secret. I understand using patents to give them a monopoly. But knowing what I know now, after reading that article, I don’t trust a drink coming from these cans. There’s no way for consumers to review the product for safety. I always assumed these containers were able to be audited by consumer watch groups and advocacy groups.
- hwillis 3y ago> It’s surprising to me that regulators allow this to be kept a trade secret. The FDA protects trade secrets and more broadly "any commercially valuable plan, formula, or device". Just because something is a trade secret doesn't mean you don't have to tell the FDA about it. That said, it's not like you really have to prove something is safe before adding it to food. > There’s no way for consumers to review the product for safety. Disagree. Or rather, knowing what the coating is does not make you any safer. What it should be is very different from what it actually is and what is inadvertently included with it. 3rd party analysis is the only thing that actually tells you what is in something. It is useful to have public listings of things for people who want to categorically avoid BPA or MSG or whatever, but that's really a different issue from safety. If it crosses over into a real safety concern, like a nut allergy, trade secrets are overridden. I (personally) don't think it's good to say that any safety concern (in this case, a hypothetical one!) can override trade secrets. I don't think it's unreasonable to disagree with that though.
- DwnVoteHoneyPot 3y agoThe article mentions chemistry vs. performance. You can test the performance of the material (reactivity to contents of can, BPA leaching) without knowing how it's made or the secrets. Shannon Yu kept asking for the detailed chemistry when others in position usually only care about the performance.
- FooBarBizBazz 3y ago1. This buried bit surprised me: > [At her new job,] she would make $157,000 a year, a slight bump over her Coke salary, with a $15,000 signing bonus. She was a 50 year old chemist with a lot of expertise, and she was making less than an entry level SWE. Also, her deal with the Chinese company is described as > codifying her 33.5% stake and entitling her to a salary of 600,000 yuan per year. Which is like $85k. (A 33% stake in something that could be big is significant though.) Still, it all seems like a lot of risk for not a ton of money. It reminds me of political bribery scandals. You hear how much some politician was paid, and you're like -- "that's it? That's all it costs?" 2. I guess she aspired to be yet another Chinese analogue of Samuel Slater (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater). But it doesn't sound like she was on track to accomplish nearly so much, even if she'd succeeded. Slater had an empire by the end. 3. This just reinforces my impression that the stuff they use in food packaging must be horrendous.
- girvo 3y ago> She was a 50 year old chemist with a lot of expertise, and she was making less than an entry level SWE. Yep, chemistry pays pretty terribly. Its part of why after finishing my BSc (Chem/Maths) I went into software dev instead, despite really enjoying it
- BearhatBeer 3y agoIt’s a forever chemical, that’s why they won’t admit what it is.