As Jonathan Berr discussed, Coca-Cola Co. (NYSE: KO) was able to a offset sluggish domestic economy due to strong international sales. The world's largest soft drink maker reported this morning better-than-expected quarterly earnings as the weak dollar was a major driver for its higher overseas sales.

The company announced its profit during the first-quarter jumped 19% to $1.50 billion, or 64 cents a share, compared with a profit of $1.26 billion, or 54 cents a share a year earlier. Included in the company's earnings figures was a charge of 3 cents per share tied to restructuring charges and asset writedowns. Excluding that, Coca-Cola's earnings would have come at 67 cents a share. Analysts' forecast (which typically exclude one time items) was for 63 cents per share in the quarter.

The company's quarterly revenue saw a rise of 21% to $7.38 billion, up from $6.10 billion a year ago. Analysts, on average, predicted sales of $6.85 billion in the quarter, according to Thomson Financial.

Remember the 90s? Ahh, the 90s, when I was in high school and college and we all believed that (a) bagels and cereal were diet foods and (b) drinking a Diet Coke with your pizza was a good way of cancelling out the calories.

The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) has announced that it will be releasing a new calorie-burning soft drink called "Enviga" in November, just in time to balance out your Thanksgiving dinner I suppose. That's right, I said "calorie-burning." It could be that my pizza/diet soda strategy from 1992 could finally actually work!

Enviga uses green tea extract (EGCG, which has nothing to do with an EKG, much though my mind immediately leaps there), caffeine and calcium, and the company says it is actually proven to burn calories. Investors seem cautiously optimistic and have sent the stock up a bit, about 20 cents, since the announcement.

I don't know. First of all: the packaging looks to me like those alcoholic drinks -- totally the wrong association for Coke's target market. Second, I connect calorie-burning with the fen-phen troubles of the late 90s (yep, those darned 90s again). Third, as Sarah Gim from Slashfood points out, Enviga is only "proven" to burn calories in "healthy people with a lean to normal body type" -- those that don't really need to burn any more calories. Sarah, Sarah! Don't you know that customers don't read the small print??

It remains to be seen whether Enviga will crash and burn due to confusing packaging, or it will soon be on the desks of millions of lean-to-normal female high school and college students, who are certain that they're in need of losing just five more pounds. If I know anything about their collective psychology, I'd be betting on option #2.