Coca, Coca Planta

Recently, trace amounts of cocaine were discovered in Red Bull products being sold in SE Asia. Apparently the drug's presence was a result of coca leaves that had not been properly decocainized before they were added to the beverage. Coca isn't a plant with a history of culinary use, so why use coca leaves in food?

The leaves of the shrub exythroxylon coca have long been used as a stimulant, particularly in South America in both the high altitude Andes Mountains as well as the Amazon basin. Although a mildly stimulating tea can be made from boiling coca leaves, coca leaves are almost exclusively chewed. Before a method to extract cocaine from coca was discovered in the 1860s, the only way to get to the cocaine in coca leaves was to chew the leaves, usually in combination with plant ash. Coca has been used this way for 1,000 of years before the arrival of the Spanish.

Cocaine was used in Coca-Cola’s original formula, but that does little to explain why, 100+ years after the sale of cocaine was made illegal in the US, coca is still present in soft drinks. Cocaine, only 1 of 14 chemical compounds found in the coca leaf, is an alkaloid. Alkaloids are toxins, which sounds bad, unless it caffeine and nicotine (also found naturally in tomatoes). Alkaloids do two things - they alter the metabolism and taste bitter. Again both sound bad but at low doses, like a morning cup of coffee or an astringent taste that activates our taste buds are thought of as good. While our ability to taste bitter flavors might be nature’s way of alerting us to potential poisons, bitter is also part of the taste palate – sweet, sour, bitter and salt (sometimes umami), each of the flavors that are stimulated as we eat helps us taste food in a more complex manner. Ultimately the alkaloid from coca adds a bitter contrast to the sweet of soda pop.

Besides my daily caffeine intake and the alcohol derived from the occasional beer and more consistently, a cocktail, my outlook on drugs is pretty libertarian. Except my live and let live attitude is heavily tempered by the fact that I don’t like drugs, not even ones prescribed to me, by a licensed medical doctor to treat a clinically recognized & curable malady. I do enjoy an occasional can of Coca-Cola though, a habit that has prompted dozens of people to volunteer they believe cocaine is more innocent than the sweet, acidic, salty, slightly bitter soft drink. Whatever one thinks about subsidized corn syrup and multinational corporations; there is nothing harmless about cocaine – slash and burn growing, armed distribution, predatory sales and users who are only about 1/90,000th as fascinating as they think they are after they take the drug –although the last isn’t an exclusive trait of drug users, you can experience the same sensation listening to someone talk about their golf game.

Saucyman returns to the world of food on Friday with advice on grilled lamb chops and new potatoes.