Coke Introduces Calorie-Burning Enviga Drink

This just in -- I'm on a conference-call press conference being held by Coke (KO) to formally introduce Enviga, the calorie-burning green-tea based drink I mentioned here last week. (It was originally highlighted several weeks earlier by Beverage Digest.)

Company says it wants to take the "magic' of a soft drink and "worthiness" of green tea and infuse that with a mirror in what's happening with weight management with a lifestyle drink. (That's their spin.) Furthermore, they say this "negative calorie" drink will augment its zero-calorie and calorie drinks. Company says it has done 45 rounds of "qualitative" consumer research.

More details: Drink will increase metabolism through a green tea extract, epiagallocatechin (best known as ECGC) -- not chromium, as is used in competing product, Celsius. The company says three drinks per day will burn 60 to 100 calories per day in healthy people (as opposed to 70 per can claimed by Celsius.) Claim to have science to back up claims. However, Coke says it will not present the drink as a "magic bullet" to weight control. Rollout in New York/Philly: Nov. 6; National, February. Other parts of the world in 2007, as well.