The fried coke nuggets, which are served topped with cola syrup, are the brainchild of inventor and concessionaire Abel Gonzales Jr. Recently, Gonzales modified his recipe a little to make the dough less cake-like and more spongy, so as to soak up more cola syrup.
"They were good before, but they are even better now," he said.
Gonzales has been experimenting with fried treats for a while now, making a big splash at last year's Texas State Fair with fried peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwiches. He made an even bigger impact on this year's fair with fried Coke, selling 16,000 cups in the fair's first week alone.
Fried foods have long been a staple of state fairs. Twinkies, cookies, and even pickles have been mounted on a stick, battered and deep-fried as a treat for fairgoers. Now, they can also get the Coke-battered nuggets -- topped with cola syrup -- that won the title for "most creative" at the Texas state fair in September.
State fairs in Arizona and North Carolina are picking up on the deep-fried phenomenon.
"We've been getting calls from everywhere since we introduced it," said North Carolina state fair spokesperson Elizabeth Martin. "Everyone wants to know where they can get it."
"This just goes to show you that a certain percentage of the population is always looking for a new way to commit dietary suicide," said Mike Adams, a holistic nutritionist and health author. "To eat anything fried is already bad for the heart, but to eat fried coke syrup is like setting off a metabolic time bomb in your gut. It delivers multiple dietary poisons all in one shot: high-fructose corn syrup, caffeine, cancer-causing acrylamides and heart-damaging fried fats.
"God forbid that people eat these snacks and then go donate blood. The recipient of that blood might someday be killed by the toxic shock," Adams said.
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