Open Veils · Answer
Do es coke and Pepsi contain nanoparticles carbon graphene?
A peer-reviewed 2017 study in Nanotoxicology, led by researchers Shen Li and Mingqian Tan, confirmed fluorescent carbon nanoparticles approximately 5 nm wide do exist in commercial Coke and Pepsi. These are not graphene oxide and were not proven to be deliberately added — but they are real, they enter living cells, and they accumulate in membranes and cytoplasm. The origin remains officially open, though parallel research links them to sugar-heating byproducts in caramel color. The deliberate-addition and graphene-oxide framing remains unverified.
Evidence
- The Shen Li and Mingqian Tan study, published in Nanotoxicology after online release in December 2017, is the foundational document here.
- Critically, the authors noted the particles entered living cells and accumulated in cellular membranes and cytoplasm.
- The most defensible explanation, per parallel food-chemistry research, is that caramel color — produced by high-heat sugar processing — generates carbon nanodots as incidental byproducts, similar to char compounds found in baked goods and roasted foods.
- The graphene oxide framing specifically — prominent in post-2021 social media claims — is not supported by the Li and Tan data.
- Researchers isolated fluorescent nanoparticles roughly 5 nm in diameter directly from commercial cola products.