Makashore:
I strongly disagree. I have drank an entire coke bottle and also done coke+mentos and can say that adding mentos helps hasten the reaction. I have also tried this with one of my best friends who has a weaker, smaller stomach than mine and almost puked while burping often while i could hold the gas in. Therefore my conclusion is that it works.
I'm sorry to say it, but that's just the placebo effect.
Believing that swallowing mentos will make a difference, tricks your mind into thinking that it has made a difference.
Scientifically speaking, swallowing mentos makes absolutely no difference, when drinking soda.
Other than, I suppose, having the added mass of a mentos in your stomach.
Which is hardly a significant difference.
You could be eating any candy, at that point.
As for the anecdotal evidence provided, isn't it possible that your friend, who you have described as having a "smaller, weaker stomach", almost threw up because they drank too much soda, too fast?
If you'll allow me to interject with my own anecdotes; I have, by no means, a small or weak stomach. But I have made myself sick, by chugging excessive amounts of soda, sans mentos.
Again, you don't need some magic, physics-defying breath mint, to bloat up from the carbon dioxide in a bottle of soda.
It's already going to happen, from the soda alone.
So you may as well save your mentos-money, and just use it to buy more soda, instead.