“It was a mistake that we started selling them to begin with, because we’re against vitamin-enriched products,” Coop executive Mogens Werge said.
Coca-Cola’s Denmark affiliates will defend the drink this week in an effort to encourage the two chains to restock the product. “The product has been approved by Danish food and drink authorities, so there’s no question it’s a legal product we’re selling,” Coca-Cola’s Copenhagen-based spokesperson Mikael Bonde-Nielsen told Bloomberg. “Our research shows that many Danes are interested in the product,” she added.
Diet Coke Plus became available in Denmark on 5 January 2009 under the name Coca-Cola Light Plus. The Diet Coke website claims that Diet Coke Plus provides “essential nutrients”, including “15% of your RDI for niacin and vitamins B6 and B12, and 10% for zinc and magnesium”.
Coca-Cola faces an uphill battle against Denmark’s long-standing aversion to vitamin-enriched products. In 2001, the European Court of Justice threatened Denmark with legal action for its continued refusal to allow vitamin-enriched foods into the country’s supermarkets unless there was a clear “nutritional need”. The European Commission alleged that Denmark’s restrictions created “unjustified trade barriers” within the international market.
However, such condemnation didn’t stop Denmark from preventing cereal company Kellogg’s from selling vitamin-enhanced breakfast foods in 2004. Health officials argued that the amount of additional vitamins was at a “toxic” level that could injure young children and pregnant women.
“In Scandinavia, vitamin-enriched products are very rare and we have a fundamental scepticism against such products,” said Erik Eisenberg, spokesperson for Dansk Supermarked, which is a unit of Copenhagen-based AP Moeller-Maersk A/S.
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