Soda Politics🥤
Both VP candidates drink Diet Mountain Dew, Kamala likes white wine with ice, Trump goes for Diet Coke--plus a visit to Atlanta's World of Coca-Cola museum
Let’s hear it for the unifying power of soda! 🎉
It turns out that both of this year’s vice presidential candidates, J.D. Vance and Tim Walz, though divided by party and ideology, favor the same carbonated beverage, Diet Mountain Dew. (Note: I call it “soda”—you may call it “pop,” depending on where you live).
Of course, as it’s less than three months before the election, even the subject of soft drink preferences can become contentious, as per a recent New York Times account.
Here’s the short version: After Vance remarked that Democrats would see almost anything as racist, including his love of Diet Mountain Dew, Andy Beshear, the governor of Kentucky and a Democrat, fired back that it was “weird” (a viral word lately!) to joke about racism when talking about this particular carbonated beverage. “Who drinks Diet Mountain Dew?” he wondered. He had to backtrack that comment quickly. Apparently many of his constituents do!
And so does Walz, the governor of Minnesota and Kamala Harris’s choice for VP. A non-coffee drinker, he regularly chugs Diet Mountain Dew (sometimes spelled “Diet Mtn Dew”) for an energy fix (about 55 mg of caffeine in 12 ounces, compared to from 80 to 175 mg in an 8 oz. cup of coffee1). Walz traded alcohol for the energizing soft drink 29 years ago after a drunk-driving arrest at age 31.
How about the other candidates?
Former President Donald Trump is said to be addicted to Diet Coke—some 12 cans a day, according to this Vanity Fair article—and even had a special red button installed on the Oval Office’s Resolute Desk to order the beverage (some visitors became nervous, fearing it was the nuclear button). President Joe Biden, also a teetotaler, favors orange Gatorade and an occasional Coke Zero, but had Trump’s Diet Coke button removed.
Biden’s and Trump’s shared abstemiousness also has common roots—both had alcoholics in the family, the New York Times noted during the 2020 presidential campaign (link here).
“They each grew up in families shadowed by the specter of alcoholism — Mr. Trump’s brother died from it, and one of Mr. Biden’s favorite uncles, whom he lived with growing up, was a heavy drinker.”
Harris seems to be the only alcohol drinker in the bunch—not surprising for the California native and former senator and attorney general of the state that produces some 90% of the country’s wine supply. Apparently she’s also a foodie—and an accomplished cook! (See Marion Nestle’s Food Politics piece on the subject for more.)
Kamala likes her white wine with an added ice cube or two, considered a breach of etiquette by some, though she shares the habit with Martha Stewart, as I discovered from an article on Foodrepublic.com (I happen to like it too—though usually in a white wine spritzer).
A Taste Test
Years ago when I was trying to shed pounds as an early Weight Watchers member (the plan called for a lot of tunafish, which I mixed with mustard—in those days mayonnaise wasn’t permitted), I discovered Tab, Coca-Cola’s first diet drink and became a Tab addict, drinking it to fill up, and, probably without knowing it, for energy—it had 31 mg of caffeine and less than one calorie. (Sadly, for its dwindling but loyal fans, it was discontinued in 2020.)
Much later, like so many others, I switched to Diet Coke. These days I prefer to get my caffeine fix from coffee or black tea. Most diet drinks have a bitter aftertaste that at first I didn’t notice but that later began to bother me.
In the interest of research, I did try some Diet Mountain Dew and was shocked to discover that it wasn’t bad. It had a pleasant orange flavor and zippy tang—and on a hot day, there’s something very cooling about that neon green color.
As for the ingredients, most aren’t real, but I’ll give the makers credit for including concentrated orange juice in the list. It comes in second after carbonated water and before all the others, some with tongue-twisting names (can you say Phenylalanine?)2.
Here’s the label:
The diet drink, along with a large family of other Mountain Dew products (made by Coca-Cola rival PepsiCo) is apparently ultra-popular in America’s heartland, where the first version (not diet) was invented 84 years ago by two Tennessee bottlers looking for a soda to mix with whiskey. There’s even an area called the Mountain Dew Belt that runs from Appalachia and the Mid-South through the Midwest. It includes vice presidential candidates Vance’s and Walz’s home states of Ohio and Minnesota.
Perhaps, instead of a debate, the two midwesterners ought to have a drink-off!
Or maybe they should take a break from soda and drink water for a change—the unbranded stuff that comes from the tap! There aren’t any unpronounceable ingredients and it would set a good example for the rest of us!
Do you have a preferred soft drink or is there some other beverage that tickles your fancy? I’d love to hear from you.
Speaking of Soda…
We were in Atlanta this week, and on a lark paid a visit to the World of Coca-Cola, an ode to the drink that was invented in the city. The museum is a bit kitschy and commercial, as you might expect but a lot of fun, with memorabilia of the evolution of the company and its products and marketing through the years, from the invention of a special syrup by John Pemberton in the 1880’s, to the vault that supposedly holds the secret formula for Coke,3 to the invention of the distinctively shaped bottles and bottling system, to its expansion into a global behemoth with more than 100 brands of sparkling and still beverages.
At the end of the tour, you are ushered into a room with a very sticky floor to sample a multitude of varieties of Coke products from all over the world, from familiar swills like Coke and Fanta Orange to fruity inventions like watermelon, apple, blackberry and raspberry-flavored sodas. Most tasted sickeningly sweet and artificial and left me feeling a little ill.
All this tasting made me yearn for the real “real thing”—like maybe something made with actual ingredients. How about some homemade ginger ale? Fellow Substack blogger Vicki Smith shared a recipe made from grated ginger, maple syrup, lemon and lime juices, seltzer water and mint leaves—sounds simple and refreshing served over ice. Or, suggests Vicki, add a splash of bourbon! Here’s a link to Vicki’s wonderful blog and the recipe:
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See you next time!
Ruth
Stats are from a chart sourced from the National Soft Drink Association, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Bunker and McWilliams, Pepsi, Slim-Fast from this website: https://www.math.utah.edu/~yplee/fun/caffeine.html
It’s fun to laugh at the unpronounceable ingredients in soda, but some like this one can be serious issues for those with a genetic condition called phenylketonuria (PKU). For them, phenylalanine, an amino acid present in artificial sweeteners containing aspartame, which is used in many diet drinks, can lead to brain damage, seizures and other serious problems. Scary stuff, yet I never hear much about it. Do you? Here’s a link to a Mayo Clinic article on the subject. (And a big thank you to Moira Nelson for her comment that brought this issue to my attention!)
The original formula for Coca-Cola was said to include both coca leaves, a source of cocaine, and kola nuts, containing caffeine. Ironically, it was first marketed as a temperance drink and invented by a Confederate army veteran who was also a morphine addict. Source: Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/pop-quiz-whats-in-a-coca-cola-if-its-not-coca-or-the-kola-nut/.
Recovering TAB addict here…
Phenylketonuric isn’t an ingredient, it’s a person with a metabolic disorder… unless “Mountain Dew is … people!”