How to make a healthy breakfast drink out of Coca Cola
In New Zealand and Australia, we have a Health Star system that is meant to help us make better decisions about what we eat and drink. As I’ve covered already, every country in the world has been getting fatter for the last 40 years, and even healthy-sounding stuff like fruit juice is often a bad choice.
It’s a tough job building a system like this, especially one that specifically excludes fruit and vegetables. We’ll get into more detail in a future article, but for now, remember that the system is a little flaky at the best of times.
Manufacturers really want to have 5 stars
Part of the goal is to encourage food manufacturers to reformulate their products to make them healthier by reducing the saturated fat, sugar, and sodium content, and increasing the protein and fibre content. However, the downside with such a simple system is that manufacturers are always going to be tempted to game the system to get the most points possible.
Lewis Road Creamery recently claimed to have made a new breakfast drink with a 5 star health rating, and then recalled it a week later after it transpired that the nutritional information section on the packaging had bogus information, and measured less than half the sugar that was actually in the product. There’s a good chance that the new labelling will cost them half a star unless they reformulate it.
To their credit, Lewis Road have attempted to add a bunch of minerals and vitamins to attempt to make the product worthy of a 5 star rating, but we aren’t interested in doing that here. Today, I’m going to teach you how to game the Health Star system in the most ridiculous way I can think of.
Coca Cola + Whey Protein = 5 stars
We essentially want low energy, low sugar, low saturated fat, and high protein. You could make a protein shake in water and get your 5 stars that way, but even the sugar content of Coca Cola doesn’t hold us back from a full 5 star rating.
We start with 32g Horley’s 100% whey, which is around 75% protein and giving us 24g of protein to start off with. In addition, whey powder isn’t very dense, so it takes up around 100mL of the 250mL serving that we’re going to make.
We then top up the container with 150mL of Coca Cola — do this slowly as it will fizz up quite a bit when it hits the whey powder.
Stir to combine, and you’re all good to go!
But the most important thing — how does it taste? With 4 teaspoons of sugar per serving, and the thickness of the protein powder, it tastes just like a chocolate milkshake.
I bet you’re skeptical though — surely there’s no way that this can get 5 stars, right? It turns out that not only did we get a full 5 stars, but we might have even made it healthy — at least by some definitions.
Protein fixes everything
It turns out that in every food category, you get a ton of bonus points for your protein and fibre content. This is a little problematic, as the definition of dietary fibre includes a bunch of artificial compounds that have no proven health benefits. Protein is also something that we should consume in moderation, whereas the health star system rewards you for having up to 50% protein in your meal. In any case, we’ve used this to our advantage, and scored a perfect 5/5… almost…
We can tweak the numbers a little more in the beverage category, and if we use 40g of whey instead of 32g then we get a full 5 stars. We also have the option of classifying our drink in the “dairy beverage” category, which gives us a bit more leeway with our sugar and fat content.
One may argue that we’re pushing this loophole a little too far, but I think we’re on solid ground here. The dairy beverage category includes plant milks, some of which have as little as 3.5% plant protein concentrate, so I feel like 40% dairy concentrate by volume is in the spirit of things here. Not to get too much into the detail, but here’s what happens to the stars on the Lewis Road breakfast drink when we change the classification:
On the flip side, the high protein and low energy content means this will likely keep you full until lunchtime without putting too big a dent in your calorie budget for the day. You’re still consuming something that has hardly any micronutrients though, so you would probably be better off with a proper breakfast.
Stick to porridge and Weetbix
Rolled oats and Weetbix both get 5 stars, and they deserve it. Grains and cereals like these are full of fibre and complex carbohydrates, and will keep you full and help you live longer. For those of you in a hurry, a breakfast drink isn’t going to hurt in the short term. Just keep in mind that no matter what brand of breakfast drink you pick, it’s going to be about as healthy as a 5 start Coca Cola protein shake.
