109 Fun Facts About Soda

Pepsi-Cola was first sold in 1893 at a New Bern, North Carolina drugstore under what name?

Brad's Drink was named for Caleb Bradham, the druggist who mixed it at his soda fountain; renamed Pepsi-Cola in 1898, it soon outgrew the pharmacy and became his full-time business.

Pepsi-Cola's name, adopted in 1898, is usually linked to early claims that the drink aided what?

Digestion was the selling point: the name echoes pepsin, a stomach enzyme, and dyspepsia, an old word for indigestion, though whether the drink ever contained pepsin is disputed.

Depression-era Pepsi promised 'twice as much' as its rivals in a 12-ounce bottle costing which coin?

A nickel bought twelve ounces of Pepsi when Coca-Cola's nickel bought six and a half, and the radio jingle 'twice as much for a nickel, too' helped double Pepsi's profits between 1936 and 1938.

PepsiCo won the right to sell Pepsi in the USSR in a 1972 barter deal for Western rights to which product?

Stolichnaya vodka stood in for cash because Soviet roubles could not be exchanged abroad, so PepsiCo took the rights to sell it in America in return for its cola syrup.

In which country did the 1992 'Pepsi Number Fever' promotion's 800,000 winning caps spark deadly riots?

The Philippines erupted after Pepsi announced 349 as the winning number and found it on 800,000 ordinary caps; the company blamed a computer error and offered holders about $18 each instead of a million pesos.

Which Hollywood star joined Pepsi's board in 1959 after the death of her husband, the company's chairman?

Joan Crawford had spent four years promoting Pepsi around the world beside her husband, Alfred Steele, so the company elected her to its board, where she stayed until 1973.

Pharmacist Charles Alderton first mixed Dr Pepper at Morrison's drug store in which Texas city?

Customers at the soda fountain originally ordered the drink by asking for a 'Waco'.

Dr Pepper is advertised as a blend of how many flavors?

23 flavors is the boast on every can, but the recipe is a trade secret, said to be split in two and locked in separate Dallas banks so that no one person holds it all.

A rumor since the 1930s claims Dr Pepper contains which ingredient, something the company flatly denies?

Prune juice has never been in Dr Pepper, the company says, yet the belief has lasted since about 1930; one guess blames a rival's deliveryman out to scare shops off stocking it.

According to a classic promotion, 'Dr Pepper Time' came at which three times of day?

10, 2 and 4 came from 1920s research claiming that energy sags at about 10:30, 2:30 and 4:30; Dr Pepper's 'Drink a bite to eat' ads pitched a sugar lift just before each slump.

After Dr Pepper sued in 1972 over a Coca-Cola soda called Peppo, what name did Coke switch to?

Mr. Pibb was Coca-Cola's fallback after Dr Pepper went to court in 1972, arguing that the name Peppo, on a rival 'pepper-type' soda, infringed its trademark.

Before it was a soft drink, 'Mountain Dew' was Southern and Scots-Irish slang for what?

Moonshine was the in-joke: the makers bottled their soda as a mixer for whiskey, and its first labels showed a barefoot mountaineer with a rifle and a jug.

The Hartman brothers first developed Mountain Dew as a whiskey mixer in which state?

Tennessee is where Barney and Ally Hartman ran a bottling business in Knoxville; unable to get their favourite mixer for whiskey there in the 1940s, they made their own.

In what year did the Pepsi-Cola company acquire the Mountain Dew brand?

Pepsi-Cola bought the Tip Corporation of Marion, Virginia in 1964; Tip had relaunched the drink in 1961, and Pepsi took it across the US and Canada.

In 1989 PepsiCo took which unusual payment from the Soviet Union for its cola?

Decommissioned warships, 17 old submarines plus a cruiser, a frigate and a destroyer, passed through Pepsi's hands and went straight to a Norwegian firm for scrap.

Early 7 Up labels advertised a salt of which metal?

Lithium, now a mood-stabilizing medicine, gave the drink its early name, 7 Up Lithiated Lemon Soda; the word was dropped in the 1930s, and one theory even ties the '7' to lithium's atomic mass.

From the late 1960s, 7 Up's ads set it apart from Coke and Pepsi by calling it what?

The Uncola was 7 Up's way of making a virtue of not being a cola; its ads held up a lemon and a lime and called them 'Uncola nuts'.

Which lemon-lime soda began life in West Germany in 1959 as Fanta Klare Zitrone, or 'clear lemon Fanta'?

Sprite was the name Coca-Cola gave the drink when it brought it to the United States in 1961 as its answer to 7 Up.

Fanta's name was born when Max Keith told his German team to use their what?

Keith told them to use their imagination, 'Fantasie' in German, and salesman Joe Knipp shot back 'Fanta!'; the drink was created when wartime trade embargoes cut off Coca-Cola syrup to Germany.

Wartime German Fanta, made without imported fruit, got its flavour mainly from the pressed leftovers of which fruit?

Apples, as fibre left over from cider presses, went in with whey from cheese-making; with sugar rationed, some bottles ended up sweetening soups and stews.

The orange version of Fanta now sold worldwide was first produced in 1955 in which city?

Naples had what wartime Germany lacked: citrus. A local bottler used the region's own oranges in 1955, and that recipe, not the German original, became the Fanta sold worldwide.

In the usual telling, Charles Hires renamed his 'root tea' as 'root beer' to appeal to which group?

Pennsylvania coal miners would never drink a 'tea', a friend is said to have warned; the teetotal Hires took the hint, then sold his root beer as 'the temperance drink'.

The FDA's 1960 ban on a cancer-linked flavouring oil ended root beer's traditional reliance on which plant?

Sassafras root bark, the traditional root beer flavouring, contains safrole, which the FDA banned in 1960 as a carcinogen; most makers switched to artificial flavouring or safrole-free sassafras extract.

Which state made Moxie its official soft drink in 2005?

Maine claims Moxie because its inventor, Augustin Thompson, was born there, in the town of Union; the brand name went on to become American slang for nerve and energy.

Which Red Sox slugger endorsed the New England soda Moxie?

Ted Williams lent his name to Moxie when it was a New England staple; the drink gets its medicinal bite from gentian root, which its creator said came from South America.

Canada Dry's popularity as a cocktail mixer took off during which period of American history?

Prohibition made the pale, dry ginger ale a hit as a mixer, because its flavour helped mask the taste of homemade liquor.

The watchmaker Johann Jacob Schweppe founded his soda-water company in 1783 in which city in today's Switzerland?

Geneva was where the German-born Schweppe worked as a watchmaker and jeweller before he found a way to bottle fizzy water; he took the business to London in 1792.

Joseph Priestley discovered how to make fizzy water in 1767 by hanging a bowl over a vat at what kind of business?

A brewery beside his Leeds home gave Priestley a steady supply of gas from fermenting beer; water held over the vats soaked it up, and he served it to friends as a refreshing drink.

Priestley's 1772 pamphlet told readers how to impregnate water with 'fixed air', the 18th-century name for which gas?

Carbon dioxide was 'fixed air' to chemists of the day; Priestley made his by dripping oil of vitriol, now called sulfuric acid, onto chalk.

Priestley gave Captain Cook's second voyage a method for making soda water, wrongly hoping it would cure what?

Scurvy went uncured, since fizzy water did nothing for Cook's sailors on the 1772 voyage, but the work on airs behind it won Priestley the Royal Society's Copley Medal.

Which NFL team's fierce 1970s defense was nicknamed the Orange Crush, after the soda?

Denver Broncos players wore orange jerseys, so the soda's name stuck to the defense that carried the team to its first Super Bowl in the 1977 season.

Critics say the one-sip Pepsi Challenge flattered Pepsi because, compared with Coke, it tastes what?

Sweeter drinks tend to win a single sip, even with people who would pick the other over a whole can; Coca-Cola's answer to the blind tests was the even sweeter New Coke.

After a 79-day backlash against New Coke in 1985, the original formula returned under what name?

Coca-Cola Classic was announced on July 11, 1985, after the company's hotline had been taking 1,500 calls a day; ABC broke into General Hospital to report the news.

Which 1980s TV character told viewers to 'Catch the wave' in commercials for New Coke?

Max Headroom, the glitchy 'computer-generated' host played by Matt Frewer, replaced Bill Cosby as Coke's pitchman after the old formula had already come back.

Which Texas-born cream soda, often said to taste of bubble gum, took its present name in 1969?

Big Red is really vanilla with lemon and orange oils; it sold as Sun Tang Red Cream Soda until a San Antonio bottler heard golf caddies call it a 'big red' and adopted the nickname.

Why did the makers of Iron Brew respell it as Irn-Bru in the 1940s?

A law demanding literally true labels was the worry: Iron Brew is not brewed, so Barr registered the phonetic spelling Irn-Bru as a trademark in 1946.

Which lemon-verbena soda so dominated its home market that Coca-Cola bought into it in 1999?

Inca Kola sold itself as 'the drink of Peru', and national pride made it the country's favourite soft drink, so Coca-Cola bought half of its leading rival there.

Which Mexican fruit-soda brand started out in 1950 with a single flavour, coffee?

Jarritos began with coffee because founder Francisco Hill wanted a soda nothing like the American colas of the day; he soon moved on to the fruit flavours the brand is known for.

The Japanese soda ramune, sealed with a glass ball, takes its name from which English word?

Lemonade, filtered through Japanese pronunciation, became 'ramune'; a law shielding small and medium firms then kept the big drink makers out of the business.

Benjamin Silliman, who began selling soda water in 1806, was Yale's first professor of which science?

Chemistry was his field: Silliman bought a Nooth apparatus, a device for charging water with gas, and set up shop in New Haven; the venture never paid, but it helped make soda water an American habit.

In which US region is 'coke' commonly used as a generic word for any soft drink?

The South, where Coca-Cola was born, turned the brand into a word for any soft drink; in a 2003 dialect survey about 12 percent of Americans said 'coke', against 53 for 'soda' and 25 for 'pop'.

The poet Robert Southey's 1812 letter is the earliest known use of which sound-inspired word for a soft drink?

Pop, Southey told his wife, was so called 'because pop goes the cork when it is drawn', and he joked that she would go pop too if she drank too much of it.

Ermal Fraze was inspired to invent the pull-tab after being forced to open a can at a picnic with what?

A car bumper had to do when Fraze forgot his opener at a 1959 picnic; he is said to have stayed up all night working out an easier way, and patented the pull-tab in 1963.

Which company was the first to sell soft drinks in all-aluminum cans?

Royal Crown had already been first to ship canned soft drinks nationwide, in 1954, and went all-aluminum a decade later; for all its firsts it stayed a distant third behind Coke and Pepsi.

Coca-Cola chose the name of its 1963 diet cola Tab from a long list of candidates generated by what?

A company computer churned out short names for Coca-Cola's first diet drink, and Tab won because it suggested keeping tabs on your weight.

Faygo's first three flavors came from recipes its founders, bakers from Russia, had used for what?

Cake frosting flavours became strawberry, grape and fruit punch sodas in Detroit in 1907; the Feigenson brothers shortened their name to Faygo in 1921 because it was too long.

A 'Boston cooler' is a float made with vanilla ice cream and which Detroit ginger ale?

Vernors goes into a Boston cooler, which despite its name is a Detroit tradition; company legend says the syrup aged in an oak cask for four years while James Vernor fought in the Civil War.

RC Cola and which snack were together nicknamed the 'working man's lunch'?

Moon Pie and RC Cola made a cheap, filling pair, and a 1950s country song sealed the match; RC itself began when a Georgia grocer fell out with Coca-Cola over the price of syrup.

Coca-Cola created Tab in 1963 to compete with which successful rival diet cola?

Diet Rite began as a niche 'dietetic' product before going national in 1962, and its sales pushed Coca-Cola into the sugar-free market.

What sent the Pepsi-Cola Company into bankruptcy in 1923?

Speculating on sugar prices ruined Pepsi's founder: he bought heavily as prices soared around the end of World War I, and the crash that followed wiped the company out.

PepsiCo was created in 1965 by merging Pepsi-Cola with which snack company?

Frito-Lay joined Pepsi-Cola in 1965 to form PepsiCo, which is why Doritos and Lay's come from the same company as the cola.

A vitamin-enriched 'Pepsi Perfect' appeared in which 1989 film?

Pepsi Perfect appeared in Back to the Future Part II, and Pepsi released a limited run of real bottles in October 2015 to mark the date Marty McFly arrives in the future.

Which rock band's hit powered Crystal Pepsi's television ad campaign in 1993?

Van Halen licensed 'Right Now' only because Eddie Van Halen reckoned Pepsi would otherwise hire studio musicians to record a copy; the drink itself was gone within two years.

Which product did Coca-Cola launch in December 1992 as an admitted 'kamikaze' attack on Crystal Pepsi?

Tab Clear was built to fail: Coca-Cola's marketing chief Sergio Zyman later said it was a decoy meant to confuse shoppers and drag Crystal Pepsi down with it.

How many Pepsi Points did a 1996 commercial jokingly price a Harrier jump jet at?

7,000,000 points was the price, so John Leonard sent 15 labels and a cheque for $700,008.50 to cover the rest; a judge ruled that no reasonable person would take the ad seriously.

What was the 2022 Netflix documentary about the man who tried to claim a fighter jet with soda loyalty points?

Pepsi, Where's My Jet? (Netflix, 2022) retold John Leonard's 1996 attempt; the court called the commercial mere puffery and Pepsi returned his cheque.

John Pemberton turned his French Wine Coca tonic into Coca-Cola in 1886 after Atlanta did what?

Atlanta banned alcohol sales in 1886, so Pemberton took the wine out of a tonic modelled on France's Vin Mariani and sold the result as a 'temperance drink'.

Frank Robinson, bookkeeper to Coca-Cola's inventor, named the drink and also gave it what?

Its flowing script logo came from Robinson's own pen; he thought 'the two Cs would look well in advertising' and wrote the name out in the formal hand bookkeepers used.

Which Atlanta druggist bought control of Coca-Cola by 1891 and turned it into a national brand?

Asa Candler pieced the rights together for a reported $2,300, at first selling his own version as 'Yum Yum' and 'Koke' because the Coca-Cola name was still in dispute.

The 1915 Coca-Cola contour bottle was modelled on an encyclopedia picture of what, found by designer Earl Dean?

A cocoa pod caught Earl Dean's eye only because the library had nothing on coca or kola, the drink's real namesakes, so the famous ribbed shape copies a plant that has nothing to do with the drink.

Dr Pepper promised every American a free can in 2008 if which band finally released the album Chinese Democracy?

Guns N' Roses did release it that November, after more than a decade of delays. Dr Pepper kept its word, but its website crashed under the demand for coupons.

From 1931, illustrator Haddon Sundblom painted which festive figure for Coca-Cola's winter advertisements?

Santa Claus as Sundblom painted him was warm, plump and human, and the pictures proved so popular that the artist is often wrongly credited with inventing the modern image outright.

Which pop star's hair was set alight by pyrotechnics during the filming of a 1984 Pepsi commercial?

Michael Jackson suffered second-degree burns to his scalp, settled with Pepsi out of court and gave the whole $1.5 million to a California hospital, which named its burn centre after him.

In which country does julmust, a dark soda made with hops and malt, outsell Coca-Cola during the Christmas season?

Sweden drinks so much julmust in December that Coca-Cola's sales there fall by as much as half. The syrup dates from 1910, devised as an alcohol-free alternative to beer.

William Painter, inventor of the metal bottle cap, urged which employee to invent another product people throw away?

King C. Gillette worked for Painter's bottle-cap company in the 1890s, took the advice to heart and came up with the disposable razor blade.

Which bitter compound, once a malaria remedy, makes tonic water glow under an ultraviolet lamp?

Quinine fluoresces so readily that tonic water can visibly glow in plain sunlight against a dark background, no blacklight needed.

In which 1980 comedy does a Coca-Cola bottle dropped from a plane upend life among Kalahari hunter-gatherers?

The Gods Must Be Crazy has the hunter Xi decide the bottle is a cursed gift and set off to return it. The film went on to gross $90 million worldwide within four years.

Mountain Dew Baja Blast was created in 2004 as an exclusive fountain drink for which fast-food chain?

Taco Bell kept the tropical lime flavour locked to its own fountains for ten years; fans could not buy a packaged Baja Blast in shops until 2014.

A yellow cap on a Coca-Cola bottle signals that the drink is certified for which religious holiday?

Passover approval dates from 1935, when Atlanta rabbi Tobias Geffen became the first outsider shown Coca-Cola's secret ingredient list so that he could rule on whether the drink was kosher.

A 1970s urban legend claimed a child actor from Life cereal ads died after mixing Coca-Cola with which candy?

Pop Rocks alarmed parents so badly that General Foods took out newspaper adverts in 1979 to insist the candy was safe. The actor, John Gilchrist, had not died at all.

Which pop artist silkscreened 112 almost identical Coca-Cola bottles onto a single canvas in 1962?

Andy Warhol loved that the richest American and the poorest drank exactly the same Coke, and that no amount of money could buy a better one.

In 1985 astronauts tested rival Coca-Cola and Pepsi space cans during a mission aboard which Space Shuttle?

Challenger carried both brands because, as one crew member told it, Pepsi had lobbied President Reagan that Coke should not be the first cola in space, so the test waited for a Pepsi can.

A Shirley Temple is traditionally made by adding a splash of which red syrup to ginger ale?

Grenadine takes its name from the French word for pomegranate, the fruit it was first made from. The cherry on top of the mocktail is only a garnish.

Coca-Cola left which country in 1977 rather than disclose its formula, clearing the way for local cola Thums Up?

India had also told Coca-Cola to sell 60% of its local arm. When the company returned in 1993 it bought Thums Up, the rival that had grown up in its absence.

Guaraná Antarctica, a soda made since 1921 from a caffeine-rich Amazon fruit, comes from which country?

Brazil's football rivalry fed a 2006 advert for it, in which Diego Maradona wakes from a nightmare of singing the Brazilian anthem in a yellow shirt and blames too much guaraná.

Which acid, listed among the ingredients of Coca-Cola, gives most colas their sharp, tangy bite?

Phosphoric acid supplies the sour edge that balances a cola's sweetness. About 90% of the world's supply never goes near a drink and ends up in fertiliser instead.

Which citrus soda did Coca-Cola launch in 1979 to take on PepsiCo's Mountain Dew?

Mello Yello got its biggest plug in the 1990 film Days of Thunder, where Tom Cruise's character wins the Daytona 500 in a car sponsored by the drink, yet nobody ever says its name aloud.

Dr Pepper permanently dropped which punctuation mark from the brand's logo in 1950 to make it easier to read?

A period after 'Dr' had come and gone in the logos for years before the company, after some debate, scrapped it for good on grounds of style and legibility.

Which vegetable flavoured a limited-edition green Pepsi sold in Japan during the summer of 2007?

Cucumber was one of a run of odd seasonal Pepsis in Japan. The next summer brought Blue Hawaii, a bright blue cola with a tropical pineapple twist.

Which root beer brand began in 1919 at a roadside stand in Lodi, California, and grew into a restaurant chain?

A&W joins the initials of founder Roy Allen and Frank Wright, the partner he took on in 1922 and later bought out before selling franchises.

Which fruit soda was the favourite drink of company clerk Radar O'Reilly in the TV series M*A*S*H?

Grape Nehi came from a line named to remind buyers of its 'knee-high' tall bottles; early adverts drove the pronunciation home with a picture of a woman's stockinged legs.

Which British soda, created in Manchester in 1908, became the drink of choice for breaking the Ramadan fast in Arabia?

Vimto has ruled the sunset meal across the Arabian Peninsula for more than 80 years. It began as a health cordial called Vim Tonic, 'vim' meaning vigour.

Which New York City mayor announced a 2012 rule capping the cup size of sugary drinks sold in restaurants?

Michael Bloomberg never saw the cap take effect: in 2014 New York's highest court ruled that the city's Board of Health had exceeded its authority in adopting it.

The Big Gulp, an oversized fountain soda introduced in California in 1976, belongs to which convenience store chain?

7-Eleven's own merchandise manager doubted anyone wanted a cup that big, so he sent a single case of 500 to one shop as a test. They sold out within a week.

The word 'cola' comes from the caffeine-bearing kola nut, the seed of trees native to which part of the world?

Africa's kola nut gave early colas both flavour and kick, since the bitter seeds are 2 to 4% caffeine. It is one of the most valuable home-grown cash crops in the west of the continent.

Which soft drink, launched in 1985 for students and young professionals, built its marketing on doubling the caffeine?

Jolt Cola sold itself as a way to stay awake years before energy drinks filled that role, and its 1987 low-calorie spin-off was named Jolt 25 after its calorie count.

Which home carbonation brand, begun in England in 1903 as an offshoot of a gin distiller, did PepsiCo buy in 2018?

SodaStream cost PepsiCo $3.2 billion, a bet on fizzy water made at home as the company tried to rely less on sugary drinks.

Nathaniel Wyeth, inventor of the plastic soda bottle, ran his first test in 1967 using an empty bottle of what?

Detergent bottles could not take the pressure of the fizz, which sent Wyeth after a far stronger plastic, PET. He called himself 'the other Wyeth', being the brother of painter Andrew Wyeth.

Coca-Cola's 'Share a Coke' campaign, which printed popular first names on bottles, began in 2011 in which country?

Australia's trial lifted Coke's share of the market by an estimated 4%, so the idea went worldwide, with each country printing 250 of its own most popular names.

Orangina's makers moved production to Marseille in 1962, just before which French territory became independent?

Algeria was home to Léon Beton, the essential-oil merchant who bought the drink's formula from a Spanish pharmacist he met at a trade fair in 1935.

Dr. Brown's, a soda brand served in New York delicatessens since 1869, makes a tonic flavoured with which vegetable?

Celery tonic was so loved by New York's Jewish community in the 1930s that the drink, sold as Cel-Ray, earned the nickname 'Jewish Champagne'.

Which Seattle drinks company marked Thanksgiving in 2003 with a limited-edition Turkey & Gravy flavour?

Jones Soda turned the joke into whole holiday packs in later years, adding flavours such as Brussels sprout, wild herb stuffing and pumpkin pie.

Which 1990s citrus soda from Coca-Cola, discontinued in 2003, was revived in 2014 after a fan campaign on Facebook?

Surge returned through online sales after the fans' 'Surge Movement' group pressed Coca-Cola. The drink had started life in Norway in 1996 under the name Urge.

Which cherry soda has been made in Salisbury, North Carolina, since 1917?

Cheerwine was named for its colour and taste, not its contents, and the family of founder Lewis Peeler has run the company ever since it began.

Frank Robinson, who named Coca-Cola and wrote out its script logo, held which job under inventor John Pemberton?

Bookkeeper was the right trade for the task: the flowing Spencerian script Robinson chose was the business handwriting that clerks of the era were trained in.

The 1971 Coca-Cola 'Hilltop' commercial plays at the very end of which television drama's final episode?

Mad Men cuts from ad man Don Draper smiling in meditation at a retreat straight to the advert, leaving viewers to decide whether he went home and wrote it.

For what price did Coca-Cola's owner sign away the rights to bottle the drink to two Chattanooga entrepreneurs?

One dollar was the price, and Asa Candler never even collected it. He was content to sell syrup to fountains, and later realised he had made a grave mistake.

Which Pittsburgh Steelers star tossed his jersey to a boy who gave him a Coke in a much-loved 1979 commercial?

Joe Greene, nicknamed 'Mean', plays an injured player won over by a young fan. The advert won a Clio Award and was replayed during Super Bowl XIV in 1980.

Pepsi cancelled a 1989 sponsorship deal with which singer after religious groups objected to a new music video?

Madonna kept her entire $5 million fee even though Pepsi pulled the advert after religious groups called for a boycott of the company's products.

Dropping which mints into a bottle of Diet Coke famously makes the drink erupt in a foaming geyser?

Mentos first set off the geyser on television on David Letterman's Late Show in 1999, but it took a 2005 demonstration shared on YouTube to turn the stunt into an internet craze.

Dr Pepper Ten, a low-calorie soda launched in 2011, was advertised with action-film parodies aimed at which group?

Men were the target because market research suggested that most diet soft drinks were seen as appealing mainly to women. Some critics called the campaign sexist.

Which sweetener, blended with saccharin in 1960s diet sodas, was banned in the United States after a 1969 rat study?

Cyclamate was pulled after rats developed bladder tumours at doses equal to a person drinking 550 cans of diet soda a day. The European Union considers it safe.

Diet Pepsi was first test-marketed in 1963 under which name, before taking the Pepsi name a year later?

Patio Diet Cola was fronted by fitness promoter Debbie Drake, and the name lingered on a line of fruit and root beer flavours after the cola itself was rebranded.

Which grapefruit-flavoured diet soda, introduced by Coca-Cola in 1966, was a favourite of President Lyndon B. Johnson?

Fresca was launched with a 'Blizzard' campaign, and New York obligingly got a foot of snow the day after the premiere party, which the company turned into extra publicity.

Aspartame, the diet-soda sweetener sold as NutraSweet, was found by accident in 1965 by a chemist working on what?

An ulcer drug was the goal. James Schlatter licked his finger to lift a sheet of paper, tasted the sweetness of the compound on it, and stumbled on a sweetener instead.

Sucralose, a diet-soda sweetener found when a chemist reportedly misheard 'test' as 'taste', is sold as which brand?

Splenda's active ingredient is about 600 times sweeter than sucrose, so the powder in the packet is mostly bulking agents such as dextrose and maltodextrin.

Coca-Cola Life, a reduced-calorie cola launched in Argentina and Chile in 2013, was sweetened with which plant extract?

Stevia leaf extract had never been used in a Coca-Cola variant before. The drink took five years of research to develop and was withdrawn in 2020.

No-Cal, the zero-calorie soda line that a Brooklyn bottler began selling in 1952, was first created for which group?

Diabetics at a Brooklyn hospital that the Kirsch family was involved with were the customers in mind, and black cherry became the most popular flavour.

Which US president, a saccharin user himself, angrily called anyone who thought the sweetener harmful an idiot?

Theodore Roosevelt snapped at Harvey Wiley, the government's chief chemist, who wanted saccharin out of American food. The clash proved the undoing of Wiley's career.