Kiwi artist's lollipops reveal sugar 'hiding' in your soft drinks

Daily Mail

15 Aug, 2015 02:55 AM3 mins to read

To make the lollipops Henry boiled each liquid on the stove top until the water was evaporated and the drinks were reduced to syrupy substances. Photo / Henry Hargreaves

A curious New Zealand-born Brooklyn-based food photographer has set out to show the world what the 39 grams of sugar found in a can of Coca-Cola really looks like by turning the popular soft drink into a massive lollipop.

Just a few weeks after The Renegade Pharmacist blog debuted an eye-opening infographic exposing how your body reacts to drinking Coca-Cola, Henry Hargreaves, who was born in New Zealand, created a visual, candy representation of the amount of sugar found in some of your favourite sweetened beverages, including Coca-Cola, Mountain Dew, Powerade and even Vitamin Water.

"I have heard health professionals recently refer to soda as the cigarettes of our generation," he explained in his YouTube video's description. "I wanted to get my head around this and show what is in a soda drink once the water has been boiled away."

"I decided to take the remaining substance and pour into a lollipop mold as that's what I feel you are essentially getting - a lollipop dressed up as soda," Henry added.

The artist used the bottom of each drink's bottle to create lollipop molds featuring lettered labels for each beverage.

As for the lollipop recipe, Henry simply boiled each liquid on the stove top until the water was evaporated and the drinks were reduced to syrupy substances.

Each beverage has varying amounts of sugar added, while most flavours of Vitamin Water have 31 grams of sugar per 20 ounce bottle, a 20 ounce bottle of Mountain Dew has as whopping 77 grams of sugar.

"What we were left with was this kind of caramelising of sugar and colouring and few other things that I don't really care to know what they are like," Henry noted in the video.

After they were boiled down, each beverage was poured into its corresponding mold and given a lollipop stick.

The final results are a stunning visual representation of how much sugar we are really consuming when we guzzle our favourite soft drinks.

Henry then took the remaining product and created a series of photos - even comparing the lollipop made out of Coca Cola to the type of lollipop you would find in the grocery store.

The images reveals that the lollipops created out of soft drinks are far larger than the standard sized lollipops you would find at a candy store.

"We all know there is a lot of sugar in our drinks, but to me the 52 grams on the back of the bottle doesn't really mean much," Henry explained.

"I wanted to put it into a context that I understood, so I decided to make these lollipops because essentially that's what I feel like we are getting at the bottom of each drink," Henry said.

Henry revealed to Mashable that he wasn't at all surprised by the results.

"I knew they [sugary drinks] were kind of rubbish, and I'd get a kick if someone was able to react in a way that might change their habits by seeing these," he explained.

And his series of photos may do just that.

After seeing pictures of Henry's lollipops, one Twitter user wrote: "Your favorite sodas have enough sugar to make huge lollipops. Mmmmm! Drink that soda dummy! [sic]"

While someone else noted that Henry's project was a "clever way to make tangible and visible the amount of sugar in soda."