I still find it hilarious that Coca-Cola was invented as a health drink. It's as if someone set out to invent a device to restore life and vitality to ailing opossums and somehow created the first semi truck. There's a lot of current and historical disagreement as to what constitutes an optimal diet, but "carbonated sugar water" has been off the list since about 1902.

This hasn't stopped Coke and other soft-drink companies from hitching their wagons to assorted health trends. Around 1958, Royal Crown Cola decided that the way to make cola more healthful was to add more artificial chemicals to it, and thus Diet Rite was torn from the earth and released from its gestation sac. Coca-Cola followed with Tab in 1963, and Pepsi started selling Diet Pepsi in 1964, so if you're wondering why Americans have been getting steadily slimmer and more healthful since the mid-'60s, now you know.

Since then, soda-mongers have been happy to jump on any cultural or nutritional bandwagon that will have them.

For example, Pepsi released the short-lived clear soft drink Crystal Pepsi in 1992 based on the theory that transparent soft drinks seem more pure and healthful, and also that people are morons.

A couple of years later, Coca-Cola played the moron card somewhat more successfully with Fruitopia, which spoke to the desire of young people to improve the world and fight for important social causes by drinking strawberry-flavored soda.

More recently, in response to the energy drink craze, Coke and Tab started appearing in tall, skinny cans next to Red Bull on grocery store shelves, and in 2006 Coke decided to respond to the Starbucks hegemony with the introduction of Coca-Cola BlāK, a coffee-tinged cola for people who feel the sudden urge to drink something terrible.

Now we have our choice of dozens of brands of low-calorie soda. Coca-Cola alone has a lineup including Diet Coke, Caffeine-Free Diet Coke, Diet Coke Plus -- which includes the great taste of niacin -- and Coca-Cola Zero. Because if you don't have an intimidatingly huge choice of lab-raised chemical cola refreshers, then you're clearly living in the former Soviet Union and use dead rats for toilet paper.

The march continues, overseas as well as here in the United States. In Japan, you can now get Pepsi Special, which is touted as a weight-loss elixir. That's because it has added fiber, which supposedly inhibits fat absorption. Cola with fiber! Even for a nation known for making all foods available in cuttlefish flavor, that's pretty gross.

Meanwhile, in France, Coca-Cola is introducing something the company calls a "beauty drink," under the extremely unnerving name of Beautific Oenobiol. The ingredients have not been forthcoming, but Coke claims the drinks will increase vitality, improve your skin and "strengthen hair and nails." I'm not sure what that last one has to do with beauty. I've never heard anyone say, "Man, that babe has hella strong hair. I bet her hair could, like, hold up a balcony. So hot."

In spite of the fact that a drink could conceivably make health claims based solely on containing absolutely no Coca-Cola, we'll no doubt see more attempts at tying Coke and Pepsi to all sorts of fads and health trends.

Really, though, your best bet for health is to just drink water. Luckily, Coca-Cola sells Dasani brand municipal tap water, so you can rest easy that your choice of drink is not depriving a multinational corporation of its God-ordained profits.

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Born helpless, naked and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg overcame these handicaps to become a soda jerk, a carhop and a beach bunny.