How sweet is it?

I love Sweet Tea. We used to see it a lot when we lived in Missouri - Catfish Annie's in Lee's Summit, for example - but haven't seen much of it it Utah.

Then we got a Chick-fil-A nearby and discovered they have Sweet Tea on the menu. They serve it like iced tea should - not pre-chilled, but poured into a cup full of ice. Now, Arizona Ice Tea has their own sweet tea - the 23.5 oz cans are 99 cents at the nearby Harmon's.

I was curious about how much sugar this stuff has, and was sort of amazed to find out it has about 25% less sugar then Mountain Dew. The Arizona Sweet Tea has 23g of sugar and 80 calories per 8 oz. A Dew has 31 g of sugar and 113 calories.

I've tried to make it on my own using my Mr. Coffee ice tea brewer with mixed results. The brewer works like a drip coffee machine, with tea bags used in the filter instead of coffee, and it drips into a pitcher full of ice.

I should be able to figure out how much sugar to add to the filter with the tea bags. Referring to the Arizona label, there's 23 grams of sugar per 8 oz of tea. If my pitcher holds 1.5 quarts, I should use about 5 ounces of sugar - about 13.5 tablespoons, or just over 3/4 cup. That seems like a lot, but I'll give it a try.

Diet Coke Plus Caffeine Report

Harv asked about caffeine in the new Diet Coke Plus. My initial reaction was, "Don't know", but thinking about it more, perhaps the label can give us some clues. The first clue is the list of ingredients - Caffeine is after Acesulfame Potassium (an artificial sweetener) and before Zinc Gluconate. This should be enough to do a back-of-the-envelope calculation of the the upper and lower levels of Caffeine, since ingredients are supposed to be listed by descending amount.

The lower bound is easy - the second clue on the label is that there is 15% of the daily recommended value (RV) of Zinc in one 12 oz bottle. A quick Google search found the RV for Zinc to be 8-11 mg. Picking 10 mg, 15% of that is 1.5 mg. Using the mole ratio of Zinc Gluconate to Zinc (455.685/65.39), the amount of Zinc Gluconate in the 12 oz bottle is about 10.5 mg.

The upper bound is a bit more tricky, but at this site, discussing safe levels of Acesulfame Potassium consumption, it states that there's 900 mg of Acesulfame Potassium in roughly two gallons of beverage. This works out to be about 42 mg in a 12 oz bottle (12 oz/256 oz (two gallons) x 900 mg).

So the amount of Caffeine is between 10 and 42 mg. Looking at a table of Caffeine content, this looks like it should be in the ballpark - Diet Coke has about 46 mg, Coke Classic has 34 mg.

So Diet Coke Plus probably has a similar amount of Caffeine that 'normal' Diet Coke has.

Diet Coke Plus

Kids won't drink anything but soda? Can't get the little rug-rats to eat a balanced diet?

Never fear, now they can have the new Diet Coke Plus, with 25% of the daily value of Niacin, Vitamin B6 and B12, plus 15% magnesium and zinc.

That's right! Just enough so Coke can claim it contains Vitamin(s) and Mineral(s) in plural!

(This stuff was being handed out as we exited the Huntsman Center after the NCAA Women's Gymnastic championships Saturday night at the University of Utah. We managed to accumulate thirteen 12-ounce bottles. It tastes OK, for a aspartame-flavored soda where the second ingredient listed is Magnesium Sulfate.)

Gas Pricing

No, not the cost of gas, that's been done to death.

What I don't understand is why gas prices are expressed to the tenth of a cent. Anybody have a 0.1-cent piece? I don't. If I buy 1.000* gallon of gas at $1.949 will I get 5.1 cents in change? No, I won't. They will keep my 0.1 cents.

We're all getting ripped off to the tune of a penny every 10 gallons. Wikipedia pegs gas consumption at 360 million gallons per day. That's $360,000 a day taken from consumers, or $131.4 million a year.

*yes, the pump measures to thousandths of a gallon. That's 0.128 ounces (volume), 0.00625 pounds, 2.8 grams or 0.19 cents. I'm impressed with the resolution of the pump, but it seems like overkill to me.

Gas Bubble

Filled up the Civic yesterday at Costco and paid $1.969/gallon. Last time I filled up (November 7) it was $2.309. I think it's safe to say that's the largest drop between fill-ups I've ever seen - 34 cents in 14 days - almost 15%.

This is the lowest it's been since March this year, but is still 12 cents higher then last year - 6.5% higher.

OSHA DART list

See who's hurting their employees more than average at the OSHA DART list.

There's a .dbf file that can be downloaded and read in MS Excel. There are
13,919 companies on the list, but some states are missing altogether - they
have their own OSHA departments.

Of interest to me:
JONES DAIRY FARM FORT ATKINSON WI
REDI-SERVE FOODS LTD PARTNR FORT ATKINSON WI
WISCONSIN PACKAGING CORP FORT ATKINSON WI

Lots of health care facilities on the list too.