DailyDirt: Uncommon Un-Colas

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Fri, Oct 10th 2014 5:00pm — Michael Ho

A vast number of soft drinks are available, and some of the most popular ones seem to have started as medicinal tonics (even the ones that aren't called "energy drinks" nowadays). Coca-cola was once a headache medicine that contained an unhealthy amount of cocaine -- that wasn't completely removed until 1929. Here are just a few other strange sodas with some unusual natural ingredients.

Pepsi is launching a new soda sweetened with stevia (and sugar), but it's only going to be available online at Amazon. Pepsi True is not shipping yet, but there are already a few reviews from people who haven't tasted it. [url]
Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray soda has been around since 1868, and it may be the only celery-flavored soda that is mass-produced commercially. Celery was once considered a superfood with medicinal powers, so they made a tonic from it, and that story is nearly the same for several other popular soft drinks with supposedly healthy ingredients. [url]
The Un-Cola 7 Up was also known as 'Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda' when it debuted in 1929. The original formula also contained lithium which, at high doses, is prescribed to treat bi-polar disorder. Lithium citrate was removed from 7 Up by the 1950s, but the drink still contains only "100% natural" flavors. (Note: drinking water may contain trace amounts of lithium, too.) [url]

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Filed Under: 7up, cel-ray, cocaine, drinks, food, lithium, natural ingredients, pop, soda, stevia, sugar, tonic
Companies: 7up, coca-cola, pepsi

9 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 10 Oct 2014 @ 6:35pm

Lithium tastes good! Yum!
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madasahatter (profile), 11 Oct 2014 @ 9:31am

Moxie
Moxie is old soft drink that is still in production and is somewhat popular in New England
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Chris Meadows (profile), 11 Oct 2014 @ 9:55am

Re: Moxie
Yeah, and it's the source of the expression, "You got moxie" so often heard in hard-boiled detective and gangster dramas.

Tastes kind of like a less-sweet Doctor Pepper.
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TruthHurts, 11 Oct 2014 @ 10:45am

sigh - just use left handed sugar and be done with it
All of these other sweeteners just plain suck.

Stevia - bitter aftertaste
Artificial sweeteners - cause cancer, parkinsons, altzheimers as well as other genetic disorders.

Left handed (aka Left Chondrite) sugars are natural sugars where the molecule is spun backwards, or left-handed.

The human body can process a maximum of about 15% of left-handed sugars, some bodies more than others.
It has the same taste, the same sweetness, the same everything as sugar because it is sugar, but it passes through the human body mostly unprocessed.

Remove the preservatives, replace sugar with left-chondrite sugar, shorten the shelf-life and mass produce the "healthier" choice in sodas.

The first soda manufacturer to do this will win market share.

Now, why haven't they done this yet? Left chondrite sugar is naturally occurring and cannot be patented, so it's greed versus health.
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John Fenderson (profile), 11 Oct 2014 @ 3:43pm

Re: Re: Moxie
Although the word "moxie" predates the soda by a fair bit.
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Jenn, 12 Oct 2014 @ 1:28pm

Thanks Prop D
Prop D in California may be influencing this. There are several loopholes, from what qualifies as 'added' to what qualifies as a 'sweetener' when it comes to taxing sodas.

I wouldn't be surprised if they're already making sodas that go under the prop's radar.
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Michael Ho (profile), 12 Oct 2014 @ 5:30pm

Re: sigh - just use left handed sugar and be done with it
There are actually a few reasons why you can't just replace regular sugars with non-digestible isomers. The problem is that non-digestible sugars don't give you calories, but they're also *not* digestible -- so they act like laxatives. That's part of the reason why artificial sweeteners are usually hundreds of times as sweet as regular sugar -- so that they don't occupy so much volume in your digestive tract.
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Rekrul, 13 Oct 2014 @ 8:23am

Why use Stevia and sugar together? The whole point of using Stevia is to use a natural sweetner that doesn't have the same adverse effects on people as sugar, especially for diabetics. Adding sugar to it destroys the benefits. They might as well just use sugar.
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John Fenderson (profile), 13 Oct 2014 @ 8:41am

Re:
My guess is it's because sugar tastes (and therefore sells) better, but they still wanted to be slap the "Stevia" label on the can.
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