For centuries, men have gone to their public house to reflect upon the day. Before bars became singles joints or girls gone wild, they were a place for thought or conversation.

In writing that “work is the curse of the drinking class”, Oscar Wilde was making a joke of a time-honored tradition. Men (and women) have retreated to where there is drink and companionship when times are tough: the bar. The bar was not always a place of rowdiness and sloppiness.

So after a long hard day at the office, I reflect in the warm sight of a cool beer by candlelight.

If the Era of Responsibility were to extend to bar life (which it will not), the public house would again be a place to “take a load off”, not a place to get loaded.

(And maybe all our beer would be made of barley and hops, not rice and corn.)

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Companies monitor their target markets very closely and, especially in the case of beverage companies, often test their response to those trends in limited markets (Coffee Coke anyone?) before going into full-blown production. With a limited market test of Pepsi Natural (Pepsi Raw in the UK), I think it’s clear what soda drinkers are demanding of Pepsico.

Like the vast majority of sodas on the market, the sweetener in Pepsi Cola is high fructose corn syrup, increasingly under scrutiny for America’s obesity and diabetes problems. Pepsi Natural is made with pure cane sugar similar to Boylan’s and other cane sodas. Cane has a rawer sweetness as it comes from a plant, not seventeen chemical processes. Check out these ingredients:

Sparkling water, sugar, natural apple extract (color), caramel color, citric acid, caffeine, acacia gum, tartaric acid, lactic acid, natural flavor, kola nut extract

That’s a big improvement over their other brands. So bravo to Pepsico, right? They’re putting a healthier product on the shelf. No chemicals, artificial sweeteners or additives. There’s even kola in the cola!

What does the Pepsi Natural say about Pepsico’s other products? From the name, I’d guess they are the unnatural versions of the product? If Pepsico knows they’re unnatural, why are they still selling a can of Pepsi Max for half the price of a Pepsi Natural? If it’s healthier, will it be marketed more than Pepsi’s new logo (much less prominent on this bottle)? Why don’t they just supplant all the sickening soda (losing feet, going blind kinda sickening) with the healthier alternative?

These are just a few questions I have when a big conglomerate tries to take the high road. The one thing that always strikes me when I’m in the organic food market is how many organic products are put out by companies with reputations for making unhealthy products. These companies are Ayn Rand’s instant undoing.

Take Heinz Ketchup for example. That Heinz Organic Ketchup is on the shelf at Whole Foods (probably for a dollar more than regular) hasn’t slowed down mass-production of the in-organic variety loaded with HFCS and other biochemical phenomena. If the organic ketchup was manufactured on the scale of the bad ketchup, would it be cheaper?

Pepsi Natural is not the beginning of Pepsico’s natural cane soda revolution; it’s a public relations stunt. If (or when) this attempt to take the high road fails, that failure will be blamed on hesitant consumers, weak ad campaigns or packaging design. A good old-fashioned glass bottle with a metal cap is better for the environment than plastics for sure. But, at a distance from the cooler, one might not even recognize this bottle as a Pepsi.

Or the taste. Early reviews say that it’s bland and flat. But maybe that’s the point.

Whether Pepsi Natural fails or succeeds, it has taught us one thing: the people making Pepsi aren’t ignorant to its harmful affects on the human body. We know that they know what the high road is.

PS - If you have an opportunity to try Pepsi Natural, be sure to let Soft Drink Reviews know what you thought of it.

PPS - An unrelated but funny take on Pepsi’s new branding.

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Daily Kos diarist Asinus Asinum Fricat discusses a new study that reveals high fructose corn syrup leads to high levels of triglycerides.

Yet another damaging HFCS report surfaces: researchers from the Monell Center in Philadelphia report that overweight people who drank a fructose-sweetened beverage with a meal had triglyceride levels almost 200 per cent higher than the same group who drank a glucose-sweetened beverage with a meal. In plain words triglycerides are manufactured by the body from dietary fat and function as fat transporters. While normal levels of triglycerides are essential for good health, increased levels have been linked to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

It’s a must read for anyone concerned about America’s diet. The diary is also a good primer on the negative affects of high fructose corn syrup on the body.

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Sweets as a fundraising device has proven effective over the years. In America, the modern familiar form is the World’s Finest fund raising chocolate. As a kid, I sold boxes of these every year for my soccer team. One year, my sister and I ate them all; my mother had to fork over the entire forty bucks for the missing box of candy bars.

Caitlin and I went to pick up our wash-n-fold yesterday and the woman at the laundromat had World’s Finest Chocolate for sale - a variety now - for just a dollar. Even if it’s just the nostalgia that’s delicious, I’m going back for more ‘dark almond’ soon.

The added bonus of fundraiser chocolate bars is that the wrapper doubles as a coupon to Pizza Hut. (No use here in New York where Pizza Hut is nowhere to be found.)

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While not as big a news story as the new President or the economy, there has been an underreported mass contamination in our food supply… again. This time it’s salmonella in peanuts. After a few weeks of warnings and recalls, the trail still leads back to how the food has been processed:

Food and Drug Administration officials called for a recall of all products containing peanut butter, peanut paste and peanut oil manufactured since Jan. 1, 2007 at the Blakely, Ga., processing center operated by Peanut Corp. of America.

That could vastly increase the number of recalled food and other products in the nation’s consumer supply.

Additional strains of salmonella also have been detected at the plant, although federal officials emphasized they have confirmed no illnesses beyond those associated with the current Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak.

“Peanut Corp” is too good to be true, a parody of the industrialization of food.

This mass contamination may well be the biggest in America yet. But the scariest part is that we do not yet know the full scope of the

More than 500 people have gotten sick in the outbreak, which has been linked to at least eight deaths. More than 400 products containing peanut butter or peanut paste have been recalled so far. They range from Asian-style cooking sauces, to ice cream, to dog treats.

“It’s among the largest recalls that we’ve had,” said Stephen Sundlof, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “We don’t have a good idea how much of that product is still out there.”

My goodness, that’s a lot of peanuts. It’s remarkable to see how dependent America’s peanut craving is on one ‘processing center’ in Blakely, Georgia. What would happen if this was tomatoes, for example, which show up in many more processed foods? By centralizing our agriculture and food production for efficiency, we have put ourselves at risk.

Not only is that processing center susceptible to an outbreak, it is also susceptible to terrorism. The next think you’d like to know perhaps is how the security is around these facilities. You wouldn’t like the answer.

In reaping the benefits of mass produced foods through lower prices, have we also accepted nationwide warnings on our kitchen staples? Not to mention the illnesses and deaths that alert us to the contaminations?

So presently all the fuss is that Nutter Butters are unavailable but the fuss should be about why they aren’t available. If this is going to be a new era of responsibility, we should take a long hard look at how we produce and distribute food.

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Caitlin and I have been thinking a lot about the quality of our vegetables especially after learning how America’s produce has been so industrialized. The reason these big spinach scares take place now is a direct result of the industrialization of American produce. Some 30 million heads of lettuce pass through a single lettuce plant in a week. All it takes is one contaminant one day to get into the system and almost all of America’s lettuce is affected. Such centralization also opens America to a terrorist attack on its agricultural system.

Caitlin and I don’t have a Whole Foods in our neighborhood but we try to hit the Manhattan ones as often as we can. It’s the best we can do for now though we’re on the verge of joining our local coop, the popular one in Park Slope.

Check out this presentation…

These pictures were taken at the Whole Foods in Tribeca. Everything on the shelf was fresh, clean, and unspoiled - a miracle by NYC grocery store standards.

But why does one have to go to Union Square to spend more on groceries to have a good diet? Why can’t we all get an equal opportunity to healthy local foods? I will spend a great amount of time on this page talking about the crisis of America’s diet. We are getting sick on the garbage we eat and we need to change our eating habits post post haste.

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I made a gallon of root beer and filled four plastic bottles. The first bottle got tight the next day, my cue to throw it in the fridge. The other three bottles took an extra day to start carbonating. There must be different amounts of yeast in each bottle. But now that they’re cold and those flavor crystals should have kicked in, I tossed a couple ice cubes in a frosty pint I pulled from the freezer.

Had the root beer smell but, as I was pouring it, I noticed: no bubbles.

And in the style of Tim Hutchings, I bring you the taste test shot.

Blech! There was no carbonation. It tasted like root beer but then a sweet chemical tastes formed and, as soon as it hit my stomach, I coughed. It did a number on my stomach instantly. I took a second sip in case the first photograph didn’t come out. I dumped the entire bottle down the drain. That’s right, I had more for this page, for you modern anachronists!

I still have three bottles and one may have turned out okay. My yeast/water/root beer mix ratio may have been better. I’ll comment on this thread if there’s anything different. But I’ve moved on to what I’ve learned from this root beer making experience.

If you want to make root beer, do not get the Mr. Root Beer kit. You’re buying a chemistry lesson - primarily on yeast. If you want to learn about what goes into root beer, how to really make root beer, my guess is that you have to take this a little more seriously. It will require money for equipment and ingredients to really see root beer get made.

It’s also striking that, instead of mixing ingredients (herbs, ground roots and such), I got two containers of flavoring and sweetening with no ingredients listed. Talk about processed foods! It’s remarkable how low America’s expectations about ingredients has fallen. I’m sure the Hires plant isn’t all that better. But there will be much more about America’s diet in the Quality of Life series on this page.

You can read the full series on root beer here; in true blog style, start from the bottom. That’s about enough of soda for the time being though I still may have more on America’s soft drink in the future.

Special thanks to Caitlin for trying it first and pretending it was good.

REFERENCES

For more on root beer, Root Beer World is a great place to get started.

For all soda all the time, I recommend my friend Tim Hutchings’s blog, Soft Drink Reviews.

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A few days ago, I wrote about root beer seemingly out of the blue. The reason I had started thinking about root beer and researching it was that I came upon this Mr. Root Beer kit in the pharmacy while Christmas shopping. I passed on it. Even though it was 50 percent off, I thought I’d never open it. It would just be more clutter.

In the week or so after, Mr. Root Beer had infected my brain. I was researching the history of root beer. Caitlin and I went through a bag of root beer barrels.

We had this big ordeal with holiday photos so I had to go back to the pharmacy and pick up a CD from the photo lab. Mr. Root Beer was still there at half-price and here we are opening up the box…

The instructions manual…

Bottles, bottlecaps, sterilizing cleaner, a balloon(!), and then the questionable ingredients: packets labeled “Flavor Crystals” and “Root Beer Mix” with no other ingredients, yeast for carbonation…

I sterilized all the “equipment” and then got started by heating up a gallon of water. Into that gallon of warm tap water, I dumped a cup of brown sugar, two cups of white sugar, a packet of “Flavor Crystals” and three tablespoons of the tar-like “Root Beer Mix”.

I then dumped the yeast in, mixed it good and bottled it with Caitlin’s help. I’m now waiting for the bottles to become firm (a sign of carbonating) and then to refrigerate them. I’ll write again when we open these bottles up and try my root beer - probably in a couple days.

It was pretty obvious once I got started that this was more like a lab kit or a chemistry kit. In fact, the second half of the instruction manual is about the science of root beer. It has three follow-up experiments, two about making things from around the house (peroxide, etc.) explode. The other involved the balloon. It serves mostly like a science lesson on yeast and carbonation.

Despite the fact that Mr. Root Beer is not interested in teaching you about ingredients of root beer through the recipe, the instruction manual tries to explain the “Flavor Crystals”:

Here is a list of over 20 different items that are used in making root beer today: burdock root, dog grass, yellow dock root, ginger root, juniper berries, wild cherry bark, birch bark, anise oil, lemon oil, orange oil, wintergreen, sugar, brown sugar, molasses, corn sugar, honey, fructose, lactose, malt extract, vanilla beans, licorice, and cloves.

I don’t remember grinding down the wild cherry bark tonight but I look forward to the results. Check back in the next few days to see the taste test.

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When I first went overseas, I was struck that foreign soda aisles were bare of root beer. Which goes to something I’ve always said: When you go away, you learn more about where you’re from. Root beer is a distinctly American (and probably Canadian) soft drink.

The frosty, foamy mug of root beer holds a special place in America’s heart. So does the root beer float. Root beer has found its way into our chewing gum. One of my favorite candies as a kid was the root beer barrel.

Root beer was first made centuries ago during the Colonial Era of America. I’ve found very little about how and when it was first made but if I learn anything, I’ll share. Root beer stayed around in some form through the revolution and the industrial revolution until Charles Hires popularized the drink in the late 19th century. It became a national staple when other sodas like colas became popular around World War Two.

The flavor of modern root beer comes from wintergreen. House Greydragon has discovered a list of ingredients (with country of origin) for Hires Root Beer in 1922.

Birch Bark - United States, New England
Dog Grass – Germany
Ginger – China
Hires special plant
Juniper Berries – Italy
Licorice – Russia
Sugar – Cuba
Wintergreen – United States, North Carolina
Chirreta – India
Ginger – Africa
Ginger – Jamaica
Hops – United States, Northwest
Licorice – Spain
Sarsaparilla – Honduras
Vanilla – Mexico
Yerba Mate, Brazil

(Yerba Mate. That stuff is all the rage right now because it’s a stimulant that suppresses appetite.)

I believe there is some confusion about the ingredients of Root Beer so, if you’re a bigger root beer expert than I, please correct me. Historically, the main ingredient of Root Beer was sassafras until 1960 when the FDA banned it for the presence of safrole, a carcinogen. (Seems like a no-brainer that there would be safrole in sassafras that’s in sarpapirilla.) House Greydragon, on the other hand, has only ever seen one brand with the ingredient. 1960 may not have been that big a year for Root Beer after all.

Root beer has always been sweetened with cane sugar but that’s an exception today; you really need to go after the craft brews for a cane soda. Today, most root beer is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. Diet root beers are generally sweetened with aspartame. Root beer is almost never caffeinated.

Today, there are at least 80 root beer companies still in production: from the mass production brands of Dr. Pepper Snapple Group and PepsiCo to smaller outfits like Jones and Sioux City. My favorite root beer right now is the crisp and fresh Boylan root beer.

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