A CORONER in New Zealand has determined that a 30-year-old woman would not have died from a cardiac arrest if she had not drank up to 10 litres of Coca-Cola every day.
Mother-of-eight Natasha Harris died in 2010 after being found slumped against a wall and gasping for air.
Stuff.co.nz reports that Coca-Cola argued that there was no way to proving that Harris’s fondness for Coke – which saw her drink up to four 2.25 litre bottles per day – could have contributed to her death.
This was disputed by coroner David Crerar, however, who said it was “unlikely that she [Harris] would have died when she died and how she died” were it not for “the consumption of very large quantities of Coke”.
Her partner said Natasha’s health had turned for the worse in the months before her death, saying she had felt sick all the time and would regularly become moody – suffering from debilitating headaches – if she had not drank some Coke.
Her partner’s mother added that she would suffer from DTs and become irritable and angry if she ran out of Coca-Cola.
The family contended that the quantity of Coke that Harris drank had caused some of her teeth simply to rot away and disappear, and said at least one of her eight children had been born without enamel on her teeth – a condition they believe could also have related to Harris’s Coca-Cola consumption.
The Times calculated that drinking 10 litres of Coke would amount to just under 1g of caffeine, and over 1kg of sugar, every single day. It added that a caffeine intake of over 500mg per day would be considered unhealthy for an adult.
The coroner conceded, however, that Coca-Cola could not be held responsible for the death of a consumer who drank unhealthy quantities of its products.
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