Coca-Cola conspiracy by Dr Lustig - how true is it?

I have already touched this topic in one of my previous articles, but there I focused on sugar content. This article is about the sodium content in the Coke.

In his oldest video from 2009, at 33.40 minute, Dr Lustig said that there is 55mg of sodium per can of Coca-Cola and that it is like drinking pizza. Did Dr Lustig want to say to us that we get thirsty from 55 mg of sodium in a can (0.330ml) of a soft drink? 

Well, let’s look at how much sodium does one isotonic drink contain per 100ml: it is 28 mg. To compare it to 330ml can of coke it makes 92.4 mg which is almost twice as much than in the same volume of Coke. And you an also taste it in the isotonic drink. The isotonic drinks are designed to contain similar tonicity to our blood so that they hydrate us well during spots activities. These drinks are not designed to make us thirsty or drink more. So what Dr Lustig meant by the Coca-Cola conspiracy based on 55mg of sodium? 

I have found no mention of salt in the nutrition facts of Coca-Cola for the UK market up to the 500ml drink size. Of course, it does not mean that no sodium is present. It means that according to the food and drink labeling rules the amounts are so negligible that they can be claimed as 0. What Coca-Cola actually says about it?

“The level of sodium in the most of our products (except for tomato and vegetable juice cocktail) is minimal and is mostly related to sodium in municipal water sources. Most of our beverages can be classified as "low sodium" or "very low sodium" as defined by FDA's labeling regulations. In the U.S. and many other countries, we declare sodium content on the product label.”

FYI, there is a general converting factor to see how much salt contains how much sodium. The molecular weight of sodium is lower than of chloride, to which it is ionically bound, forming our usual salt. Therefore, if you want to find out how much sodium is in 1g of salt, you have to multiply it by 0.4, so you get 400mg. The other way round, multiply amount of sodium by 2.5 to get the amount of salt needed to get this amount of sodium. So, in the 330ml of coke, if it contains 55mg of sodium, that equals to 137.5 mg of salt, which is virtually nothing in comparison to the daily limit of 4-6 grams of salt for an average person. Now take one 28.4g bag of salted crisps and you will consume 136 mg of sodium or 340 mg of salt. 

Finally, how about pizza? According to NHS, some takeaway pizzas are saltier than Atlantic Ocean, containing about 10g of salt. The Guardian reported that the supermarket pizzas generally contain half of that amount of salt, which is still about the whole daily allowance of salt. Of course, the content of salt will depend on the ingredients used, not all pizzas are the same. When you search the content of salt in pizza, the Wikipedia will offer you a figure 598mg sodium pre 100g, which translates to 1495 mg of salt, or 1.5 g, about a third of our daily allowance. 

So, again, Dr Lustig has been pushing too hard and a quick check of the facts made me and you see the flaws in his claims once again. It is not the salt that will make us drinking more Coke, it will be its sugar content and perhaps the salt in the food or the delicious and secret formula of the Coca-Cola syrup, which is known to only two men on the globe. For us to be thirsty for more fluid, the Coke would have to contain significantly more salt and we would need to taste it, despite a high content of sugar in it. Period.