Will This Be Pepsi's "New Coke" Moment?

Mug Root Beer has been around for many years now and has been fairly successful with Root Beer drinkers. Now PepsiCo has decided that they will change up the formula. They're going to add in a new flavour/sweetness enhancer and reduce the actual sweetener used in the beverage. Why the decision to change something that has been working for years? Corporate shenanigans, most likely. Mug is a perfectly decent massed produced Root Beer and doesn't need any "improvements". If they really wanted to improve on it they could switch over to Sugar as their sweetener and put out some nice glass bottle editions of it. That would be an improvement. This does not bode well for Mug fans, I am thinking.

Dang It!

On a recent trip to Cincinnati, my spouse was kind enough to drop into Jungle Jim's and score me a few Root Beers and Sodas. One of the Root Beers was Dang!, a Root Beer that is bottled for Imperial Flavors Beverage Company Inc, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 
   Their Root Beers are carried in a variety of places nationwide, so finding one shouldn't be a great problem. This is one of those Root Beers that is worth tracking down. Now, I'll have to track down their Butterscotch Root Beer!

Ingredients:

Carbonated Water
Sugar
Natural and Artificial Flavours
Caramel Colour
Citric Acid
Sodium Benzoate (as a preservative)

Aroma: Vanilla scent is upfront and pleasant. A bit of sugar in the scent, but not too much.

Head: Soda-like head that dissipates quickly.

Carbonation: Good carbonation. Keeps its fizz. Not a lot of carbonation bite.

Root Beer Flavour: Hints of wintergreen and nutmeg. Just a bit of spice to this one.  A very nice taste.

Sweetness: Not overly sweet. It well balanced and not cloying at all.

Aftertaste: A spicy aftertaste on the tongue with vanilla overtones. Very nice!

Overall: This was a delightful Root Beer. Has a good flavour and aroma. I could drink this often. It is a "Dang" good Root Beer. Imperial Flavours can be justifiably proud of this one!


I give Dang! Root Beer an 8.5 out of 10 an A. It's a solid Root Beer. Well worth drinking!

Sugar Gaining Ground

Add Snapple to the list of drinks abandoning HFCS for Sugar. Yeah, I know it's not a beautiful, fizzy beverage, but it's a sign of the times and it is owned by Dr Pepper.

Snapple, once the “official beverage of New York City,” is being redesigned — inside and out — this year.

The popular iced teas are losing the high-fructose corn syrup and the dated font. The bottles are becoming more svelte (to better fit into cup holders, which became a force after Snapple iced teas were originally introduced). The labels will also emphasize the green and black tea leaves used to make the drink. The changes are rolling out over the first few months of the year, and they are expected to hit New York in early March, according to Dr Pepper Snapple Group, which is now the owner of the brand.

Snapple, which once defined the genre of specialty tea, now finds itself fading in an increasingly crowded field of competitors. The brand, which passed through many hands before landing as part of Dr Pepper Snapple, went through a round of focus group testing over the last two years.

“Through that work we really found that Snapple had lost of its luster and had been replaced in the minds of consumers by other beverages out there,” said Jim Trebilcock, an executive vice president with Dr Pepper Snapple.

(For example, President Obama prefers (the more lightly sweetened) Honest Tea, and the White House is now stocked with his favorite flavors, Black Forest Berry and Green Dragon.)

Real sugar is replacing the corn syrup. (Sugar vs. corn syrup, by the way, is the difference between Mexican and American Coca-Cola.) In some cases, that has actually resulted in a decrease in calories.

The old ingredient list for Lemon Snapple Iced Tea: “water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, tea, natural flavors.” Calories: 200. The new ingredient list: “filtered water, sugar, citric acid, tea, natural flavors.” Calories: 160.

Now if only Coke and the other people out there would hop on the train. And I'm pretty sure that Obama has nothing to do with their decision, despite his inclusion in the article.

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Snapple, Sugar, Soda, News

New Push On Against Root Beer And Sodas

First they came for the smokers and I screamed my head off, even tho I wasn't a smoker. Then they came for the trans fats and I screamed my head off again, even tho I avoid trans fats. Now they're coming for Root Beer and Sodas and I'll scream my head off again, for all the good it'll do.

It seems that the nannies over at the Centre for "Science" in the Public Interest and some of their fellow traveller busybodies are looking to attack bubbly beverages now. They are even going so far as to propose "modest" taxes on effervescent wonders to be used to fund themselves.

Consumer groups on five continents are promoting a new “Dump Soda” campaign to educate people about the links between soft-drink marketing and rising childhood obesity. “Multinational giants like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are flooding the world with beverages that are nothing more than ‘liquid candy,’” said Bruce Silverglade, legal director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is coordinating the campaign with the International Association of Consumer Food Organizations. “As a result, consumers, including children, in all corners of the globe are increasingly developing obesity, ‘adult onset’ diabetes, and other health problems.”
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Their demands include asking governments to require soft-drink producers to stop advertising sugar-laden beverages to children under 16 and to impose a modest tax on soft drinks to fund nutrition and fitness programs. The campaign also promotes the marketing of lower-sugar products, selling existing products in smaller portions, and stopping sales of sweetened beverages in all public and private schools, from elementary to high school.

It's all for the children again. Sheesh. Of course they failed in their "science" part, again. The vast majority of drinks on the market do not contain sugar. That's obvious from only a cursory glance at a label in most countries, especially the US. Most are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup. If they would actually champion sugar as the primary sweetener, rather than nanny banning and taxation, they might actually get my attention in a positive manner. Instead they have, once again, aroused my ire with their latest anti-everything good campaign.

Environmentalists and nannystatists seem to go hand in hand, these days. Wishing to impose their tofu and water lifestyles on everyone else. All for their own god, of course. Well, guess what folks? I am the final arbiter of what goes into my body and that of my children. Not you. Not your "scientists" and certainly not the politicians you will manage to sway with your "oh so caring" rhetoric. You people will be in for a fight on this one. Here's my line in the sand.

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Root Beer, Soda, Libertarian, Sugar, Politics