Woman's Death Linked To Excessive Consumption of Coca Cola

The death of a New Zealand woman has been linked to excessive consumption of Coca Cola, BBC reports.

Natasha Harris, a woman from New Zealand, died three years ago due to cardiac arrest. The doctors found a lack of potassium in her blood, a case scientifically known as hypokalemia. A report by BBC confirms that the lady drank up to 10 litres of Coco Cola in a day, which is now said to be the cause of her death.

According to the woman's family, Harris was addicted to the drink and would start shaking and go into depression if she didn't get her daily dose of the soda.

"(She would) go crazy if she ran out... she would get the shakes, withdrawal symptoms, be angry, on edge and snappy," her mother-in-law, Vivien Hodgkinson, told the coroner's inquest last year.

She had to have her teeth removed as the sugar content of the drink had eaten into them. Harris, the mother of eight children, suffered from many other illnesses before her death due to this addiction. One of her children was even born without enamel on his teeth.

Coroner David Crerar confirmed that this addiction was the cause of her death, reports BBC. According to him, the amount of Coco Cola Harris drank was equivalent to the consumption of more than two pounds of sugar and 970 milligrams of caffeine. This is twice the recommended safe limit of caffeine and more than 11 times the recommended sugar intake.

"I find that when all the available evidence is considered, were it not for the consumption of very large quantities of Coke by Natasha Harris, it is unlikely that she would have died when she died and how she died," Crerar said of his findings.

Coca Cola, however, said that the company could in no way be linked to the death and is in no way responsible for the tragic incident.

"The coroner acknowledged that he could not be certain what caused Ms Harris' heart attack," Coca Cola said in a statement. Therefore we are disappointed that the coroner has chosen to focus on the combination of Ms Harris' excessive consumption of Coca-Cola, together with other health and lifestyle factors, as the probable cause of her death. This is contrary to the evidence that showed the experts could not agree on the most likely cause."