This post is about soda pop. In theory soda pop is not a health food. In practice, because soda pop is such an un-"natural" food (that I don't actually think of it as a food), it is low enough in glyphosate content to supply the calories many of us can no longer safely get from those things in the supermarkets that look like healthy food. This post is not the place where I mourn for the spinach and tomatoes and strawberries that used to be food but, thanks to widespread glyphosate spraying, are now basically little sponges full of poison. Today, realistically, rice, garlic, and onions are foods. Meat and eggs are things humans weren't really designed to eat daily, but at least they don't usually produce immediate glyphosate reactions. Vegetables are things like chickweed and dandelions, which are very low in calories, gathered in fields we know have not been sprayed. These vegetables are very low in calories, and a relatively safe source of calories is soda pop. This makes soda pop part of a glyphosate survival diet even though calories are all it has to offer.
The current movement to denigrate soda pop as the beverage offered with meals in U.S. restaurants is not coming from "health food" types. They've been drinking water with their brown rice and alfalfa sprouts for more than a hundred years. All restaurants offer water, usually without being asked, usually served by the person who cleans the tables, and often ignored by the person whose "Can I get you anything to drink?" means soda pop. Who has a problem with this? Mostly Europeans do. Europeans have a bizarre belief that what they drink with their meals is supposed to be wine or beer. Though alcohol tolerance is a majority genetic pattern in Europe this belief still seems likely to have something to do with all those tribal feuds they think they can settle only by war. Americans need to stand firm on this. In two of our major ethnic groups alcohol tolerance is a minority trait, and also in most of our country the water doesn't have that vile taste of chemical contamination that so much European water has, so what we drink with meals does not contain alcohol. Generally we drink water or soda pop. Coffee is usually preferred with breakfast or by long-distance drivers. If Europeans want to drink wine at lunch they can always go home.
Anyway, for those who don't know: In the United States we have three major soda pop bottlers. Back when the companies formed, cola was the most popular flavor, and cola brands became the flagship product of each company: Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and RC. Each company also produces soda pop in other flavors: the sugar-free and/or caffeine-free versions of their cola drinks, and a few flavors that are meant to suggest fruit, though most of these flavors contain little or no actual fruit juice. Some fruit flavors are caffeine-free. In the late twentieth century, however, heavily caffeinated citrus soda became the companies' big sellers. Pepsi marketed Mountain Dew; Coca-Cola brought out Mello Yello, and RC brought out Sundrop, to compete with Mountain Dew.
What "citrus" flavor tastes like was never firmly defined. The pleasantly lemony-smelling extract of fuzzy black mold, known to the food industry as citric acid, is probably the primary source of the sweet-sour taste. Manufacturers may add small amounts of whatever citrus fruit is cheapest at the moment. Green bottles suggest limes. Mello Yello sometimes, not always, tastes like orange juice. Sundrop is usually the most lemony, sometimes with hints of grapefruit. Mountain Dew is basically a fizzy lemonade but has generated a rainbow of flavor variations, with cherry ("Code Red") and blueberry being the most popular. Watermelon, mango, and lime-flavored Mountain Dew have also sold well.
I never really liked cola as a flavor, though I never really hated it either. In town I'm most likely to buy coffee, often describing it as "black as the eyes of the man I love." For home consumption I get caffeine from citrus soda. I'm partial to Sunkist, a separate brand locally bottled at the same place the RC is bottled, because only the orange flavor contains a relatively small amount of caffeine.
Mountain Dew and Mello Yello contain a lot of caffeine. There is something to be said for not drinking either flavor every day, even as an adult. When children are allowed to drink Mello Yello or Mountain Dew, they should not be blamed if they seem temporarily "hyperactive." They have, after all, just taken a stimulant at a dosage made popular by overnight truck drivers. As a slightly hyperthyroid celiac, when I get my six hours of sleep at night I move faster than most of the people I know, without a huge amount of caffeine.
But a nasty thing happened in the soda pop industry during the last decade or so. Europe was emitting its usual flatus about the fact that "nice, wholesome, family-type" restaurants in the United States don't serve wine, and Americans were ignoring it as usual, when the manufacturers of Mountain Dew took notice of their local competition. Mountain Dew is a local product in my part of the world, actually (the name was in common use for moonshine, and a couple of clever chaps in Virginia and Tennessee claim to have been the first to use it as a brand for citrus soda pop), but Mountain Dew has been marketed nationwide. Dr. Enuf has stayed local.
Dr. Enuf is a soda pop invented by a local health food person; it contains caffeine and vitamin supplements. It is sold in small glass bottles, which deter people who don't want to have to recycle the bottles from drinking it often. Despite a faint hint of the taste of a vitamin supplement pill, the flavor of Dr. Enuf is not unpleasant. Many local people like it.
`"Go to!" quoth the manufacturers, "let us add vitamin supplements to our caffeinated drinks, and sell them to the people as 'energy drinks,' and burn them thoroughly!" Dr. Enuf costs more per ounce than Mountain Dew, but not much more, mostly on account of the glass bottles. The profit margin for soda pop is very high but the manufacturers of Coca-Cola and Pepsi saw room for even more profit in "energy drinks" concocted by adding even more caffeine to failed flavors of Mountain Dew, throwing in a few vitamins to offset the effect of overcaffeination on overnight truck drivers, and selling the results for twice the price of Mountain Dew.
Many people, observing that Mountain Dew was either strong enough or too strong for their caffeine needs, already, never even tried those "energy drinks." Price was also often mentioned as a reason to stick to the familiar, and very affordable, soda pop.
Most of the cost of the nationally advertised brands of soda pop has always gone into creative advertising. Production costs are low, and profit remains high. Corporations, however, are dominated by a rule that says that no opportunity to inflate profits should ever be lost. Coca-Cola and Pepsi poured money into advertising the "energy drinks." People who had forgotten what a healthy natural level of energy felt like, long ago, started buying those drinks for everyday consumption. Seeing that those people remained fat and depressed despite doubling the amount they paid for caffeine fortified other people's resolution to stick to lower doses of caffeine.
"We must burn the people more thoroughly!" cried the boys at Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and around 2010 they added their support to Europe's whines about being awakened by caffeine rather than sedated by alcohol at lunch. Soda pop was evil! (Well, if mistaken for food, it is; it is empty calories.) People shouldn't be drinking soda pop! Since Americans firmly rejected the marketing message that they "should" be drinking wine, they should be drinking "energy drinks" with vitamins! The price demanded for nationally advertised soda pop suddenly jumped up to match the price of the "energy drinks."
RC, which had not wasted money on marketing "energy drinks," saw its opportunity--at least for a few years. Brands bottled by RC bottlers, including Sunkist and Nehi as well as RC and Sundrop, were wrapped with labels suggesting retail prices that remained reasonable: 99 cents for a two-litre bottle, comparative price-per-ounce for six-packs of smaller bottles.
Sunkist and Nehi are brands for collections of fruit-flavored soda pop that generally do taste like the fruit advertised. People started buying them in large amounts, though all things cola seem to have appealed more to the older generation than they do to mine. Stores that adhered to the suggested retail price couldn't keep those flavors on their shelves.
When I go into a store and see a three-figure price on a two-litre bottle of soda pop, my immediate reaction is, "Sit on it." I mean the greedy retailers. People have been trying to push the price of two litres of soda pop above the 99-cent barrier since the 1980s, and sensible shoppers have forced those people to get those prices back to where they belong, often selling the overpriced bottles for 49 cents as "outdated." I figure the store can keep those overpriced bottles until they correct the prices. The big chains call it a "sale." Whatever. It's the price I'm willing to pay. If the manufacturers want more profit, let'm advertise less.
Pepsi and Coca Cola kept pushing "regular retail" prices higher on bottles of soda pop that sat on the shelves until "sale" prices went into effect. Meanwhile people drank RC and related brands and, if we wanted extra caffeine, Dr. Enuf, which wasn't all that much more expensive than RC.
Sundrop, RC's caffeinated citrus soda, contains a fairly strong dose of caffeine, not quite as strong as Mello Yello or Mountain Dew; but, like many people, I hadn't been drinking it very often because it just didn't taste as good. The fruit flavor was insipid and the drink tended to contain a lot of sediment. I remembered having liked Sundrop as a teenager, when the brand was new, but as an adult I just didn't think the taste stood comparison with Mountain Dew. Or Sunkist. Or D.C. tap water, actually.
But this summer I asked the cheerful chap who supplies the Cat Sanctuary with Pure Life bottled water, which Serena has convinced her kittens is a treat, to deliver a few bottles of 99-cent soda pop from the RC rack. A mix, I said. I like variety. Whatever ten dollars would buy. So he delivered a nice mix of fruit-flavored soda pop, and several bottles were, oh no, Sundrop. I didn't complain or withhold payment. I just thought that another time I might ask for RC Cola instead of Sundrop.
Then I opened a bottle of Sundrop. No sediment. I tasted it. Lemony. Sundrop always was more sour than the other citrus sodas. That's not a bad thing. This bottle of Sundrop had the flavor I remembered from high school.
I sipped my way through the 99-cent soda pop over the summer, and all of the Sundrop actually tasted good. At some point I understood why. Every bottle of Sundrop I'd tasted in recent years had been sitting in a store for months. The sediment and the lack of flavor were signs that the drink had really passed its prime. For the first time in years I was drinking fresh Sundrop. People were buying the stuff again, and yes, if you like lemon, it tastes good.
Now the stores that sell RC and related flavors are running out of those 99-cent bottles. I asked a senior employee about this and was told, "We don't know if we can get such a good deal again."
I hope so. I hope RC holds its sudden market lead. Coca-Cola and Pepsi need just to absorb their losses on those silly "energy drinks" and get the prices on soda pop back within reason. They can always cut out the advertising. Meanwhile, I'd like to see Sundrop continue to be a little sourer than other citrus soda pop, but taste fresh and good.
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