Word: alkaloid
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...Bull has always been upfront about the recipe for its new cola. Its website boasts colorful pictures of coca, cardamom and Kola nuts, along with other key "natural" ingredients. The company insists, however, that coca leaves are used as a flavoring agent only after removing the illegal cocaine alkaloid. "De-cocainized extract of coca leaf is used worldwide in foods as a natural flavoring," said a Red Bull spokesman in response to the German government's announcement. Though the cocaine alkaloid is one of 10 alkaloids in coca leaves and represents only 0.8% of the chemical makeup of the plant...
...through the extensive chemical process that yields cocaine. Left-wing President Evo Morales, a coca-grower himself, has made coca validation a personal quest, chewing leaves in front of world leaders and press cameras during his travels. "Let's say [Red Bull Cola] doesn't take out the cocaine alkaloid. Have any of those millions of people across the world who have drunk that soda ever gotten sick or felt drugged?" asks Dionicio Nunez, a coca-growers' leader from the Yungas region. "We've always known that coca isn't harmful. Now maybe others will realize...
...comes to coca and cocaine, it's not just a health concern, but a legal one. Since 1961, trade of coca outside the Andean region - where people have chewed or brewed coca in tea to stave off hunger and exhaustion for centuries - has been prohibited unless the cocaine alkaloid is removed. Few companies in the world have authorization to trade in the leaf and most are pharmaceutical companies that perform this decocainizing process. The most prominent is New Jersey-based Stepan Chemical Company which has been reported to supply Coca-Cola with its narcotic-free derivative. (Read about the anti...
...fact Red Bull Cola admits to using coca in any form (since Coca-Cola evades the question). Ironically, the drink is not actually available yet in Bolivia. But, the locals say, this is a great opportunity to show that coca isn't harmful - with or without the cocaine alkaloid. With Reporting by Tristana Moore / Berlin...
...Because it contains the hallucinogenic alkaloid dimethyltryptamine, or DMT, drinking ayahuasca in the U.S. is illegal. But traditional use of the plant potion is permitted in much of South America. Its mecca is the Peruvian city of Iquitos, which hosts the annual International Amazonian Shamanism Conference and is home to about a dozen lodges that cater to curious foreigners. At first, local residents feared that a flood of stoned beatniks would turn Iquitos into an unruly rain-forest Woodstock. "I thought they'd be from the hippie graveyard, with tattoos and sunken faces," says Gerald Mayeaux, a Houston native...