AMARA AND THE ULTIMATE GREENIE EXPERIMENT
Part 2

Amara leans in close to Kristy as she huddles over her a piece of paper, scribbling out equations quickly. “Amara” Kristy says, “According to my calculations here, you are drinking at least 24 Cokes a month, which means equals 288 cans of Coke a year!”

“Wow!” said Amara, “I never thought about it that way. That’s a lot of cans! And the way I felt today makes me think that Coke might not even be that good for me, and I drink a lot of Coke!”

“Good point” said Kristy, “I have an idea on how to figure out the answer to that too!”

Kristy and Amara quickly hopped on the computer in the living room, opened up Google and typed in ‘calories in coke’.

“OK” said Kristy, “according to this search, there are about 97 calories in each Coke you drink. Which means that if you drink 6 cans of Coke a week, that’s 582 calories. If we multiply 582 by 52 weeks in a year, we get…..” Kristy trails off as she types these numbers into the computer calculator….

“OMG!!” shouts Amara as she sees the result, “that’s 30,264 extra calories a year!!! Just from me drinking a can of Coke a day!”

“OK don’t freak out Amara” says Kristy “but most of those calories in the Coke are coming from the sugar in the soda, which may have been what gives you the rush on most days, but today you crashed! You were on sugar overload!”

Amara sits back in her chair and swivels around while thinking aloud. “Kris” she says, “this is what were gonna do. For the next week Im going to drink water at lunch and not Coke. At the end of the week, if I feel better this experiment will have worked. I will not only be saving myself from the extra calories and sugar, but I will be saving 6 cans a week from ending up in the landfill!”

“That is an amazing idea!” shouts Kristy, “It’s the ultimate greenie experiment! You’re saving your health and the planet!”

Over the course of the next week Amara drank water at lunch. Not only didn’t she crash during Social Studies but she felt great! She felt so good that she decided to give up Coke for good, she decided she was a water girl for life. And not only that. After the first week was up Amara did some calculations of her own. She figured out that by not drinking Cokes she will save 288 cans a year, and save herself from gaining about 8 pounds by not drinking all that soda. What an easy call… duh!