"WHO WANTS A SODA?"

Right now I’m drinking a Dr. Pepper.  No, I don’t usually drink Dr. Pepper or other carbonated beverages early in the morning.  I will post this on the blog on Saturday morning, but I’m actually writing the rough version of it late Friday night- and I’m drinking a Dr. Pepper, and eating some really good ice cream as I write!  There is a movement to ban soda machines in schools, and there are some people who would ban all carbonated beverages.  I know society’s attitude about cigarettes has drastically changed over the past forty years, and I know that over the next forty, the same thing could happen regarding carbonated beverages.  I hope it doesn’t!  I like carbonated beverages!

I don’t know when I first drank soda.  When I was a very little kid, we had it only for birthdays and very special occasions.  By the time I was around twelve my parents had loosened up quite a bit about it and we had soda in the house all the time.  In New England, we drank Cott quality beverages.  I think I drank more “Cott golden ginger ale” than any other “tonic” as a kid.  I wouldn’t be a kid who grew up in Boston if I didn’t use the word “tonic”. Recently, Mike Barnicle commented that he NEVER heard soda called “tonic” when he grew up in Massachusetts.  That’s because he grew up in northern Worcester County.  In Boston and its immediate suburbs, it was “tonic”.  Today, only very old people and very poor people in the immediate Boston area call it “tonic” but thirty-five years ago, everybody did.

Carbonated beverages were “accidentally” created by a scientist in the 1860s who was working on something else.  In the late 1800s and very early 1900s, such drinks were actually thought of as MEDICINE.  They were served from “soda fountains” in pharmacies.  Coca-Cola started that way in Atlanta in the 1880s.  Moxie (which still exists) was originally manufactured by the “Moxie Nerve Food Company”.  These drinks were flavored by roots and nuts and bark.  They were thought to be inherently healthy.  My, how times have changed!  It’s true that there is SO much sugar in soda, and so much artificial sweetener in diet soda that most of the nutritional value is compromised.  But, the stuff just TASTES so good!

I never drank Dr. Pepper until I went to Bible College in the late 1970s.  I don’t think it was even sold in New England at that time.  At first, I thought it tasted like a mixture of cough syrup and carbonated water.  I developed a taste for it, and now I like it.  Moxie has a much more bitter flavor.  I’ve got a pastor friend in rural Maine who drinks Moxie the way I drink water.  He passes out cans of Moxie the way some pastors pass out tracts, and, well, when you’re with him you drink Moxie and you like it!  My father was a huge Seven Up fan.  I think that was his favorite “tonic”.  Every time I drink a Seven Up, I think of my father.  I can actually get a little misty-eyed when I do.

I have a friend who is an executive with Coca-Cola.  He has told me a lot of interesting stuff about soda.  For one thing, it gets more carbonated when it gets colder.  For another thing, diet soda DOES produce more foam when you pour it than does regular soda.  Pepsi has more carbonation and more sugar than Coke does.  As you can guess, Pepsi is verboten with him!

My brother-in-law drinks Mountain Dew.  It contains much more caffeine than does Pepsi or Coke.  But that’s not true in Canada. Canadian Mountain Dew is not allowed to contain any caffeine.  I have had Mountain Dew in Canada.  There is no “caffeine kick” after you drink it- which is weird, but I honestly wish they’d offer a no-caffeine Mountain Dew in America for customers who’d prefer it that way.

Is there ANYTHING spiritual about carbonated beverages?  Well, for one thing, plenty of them are consumed at church socials. And, for another,  First Corinthians 10:31 says,  “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”