Soda Pop

Soda pop is the second most popular drink in the USA. Water comes first. Not at all surprising. 70% of all soda sales are cokes. Next comes lemon-lime. Just a little bit surprising. These are followed by pepper, root beer and orange soda. Other sodas make up 2-3% of all sales. I don't like that many kinds of pop. I hate coke and root beer. I like lemon-lime type sodas, orange sodas, sangria,(I think that's how you spell it; I've only seen it for sale in Mexico and California. I first tried it in Mexico) and some soda I had in Mexico.(I think it's called Manaza or something, I'm not sure.)

Pop is 90% water.(Tell that to your parents next time they tell you that sodas are bad for you. Well, they are, cola especially, as it is addictive due to caffeine content. If you have insomnia or cardiac disease, avoid it at all costs.) All soft drinks are bottled or canned at high pressure and low temperature. This allows for the soda to dissolve the maximum amount of gas(carbon dioxide, the stuff you breathe out. Not at all kidding.) I will now reveal the process of making soda.
1. Purify the water. Chemicals are added to the water to remove the flavor of chlorine or other minerals. It is then passed through a microscopic filter to remove impurities. Don't worry, the water is clean to begin with, but they purify it just in case.
2. Sweeten the water. 70% of all pop is sweetened with corn syrup. The other 30% is a chemical sweetener. It is usually only added to diet soda. Corn syrup is cheapest, though.
3. Add flavor and coloring. What they do depends on the type of soda.
4. Carbonation. The finished syrup is cooled and sprayed into a pressurized container of carbon dioxide. The water in the syrup dissolves the gas. The carbonized liquid is bottled, x-rayed for fullness and shipped.

All that work for a can of liquid.

If you add baking soda to juice, it will carbonate the juice and make it fizzy. But I wouldn't try it if I were you. When I tried it, it may have been fizzy, but the flavor was dreadful. You probably could find a recipe for something more tasty on the internet. Don't repeat my mistake.

Pop is really not that good for you. But I am not going to dwell on the drawbacks because, well, who wants to? I'll just tell you this. You would be very, very, very surprised. But there are a few good things. Here they are.

1. Water content
2.Speeds digestion

Some people find this stuff interesting.(Either that or there are some very bored scientists out there.)

So next time you open a bottle of pop, think about all that I've said. And don't tell your parents that soda can cause allergies and irritate the stomach.

In Los Angeles, there is a store called Galcos Soda Pop Stop. It is called this because it sells a lot of pop (like you can't guess that). I haven't seen the amount of soda varieties they sell, but it's probably fairly high. They stock all the kinds of pop you can't find in big stores. There's Bubble-up, an old kind which I've heard of being used for upset stomachs, and I wouldn't even guess at most of the other kinds. There is cucumber, which is supposed to be quite refreshing. There is even sodas made from flower petals. I would love to try one of those. There is all kinds of cherry sodas, too. They stock kosher coke around Passover. Why they have to make it kosher for the Jews I'll never know unless I look it up. How on earth do they conceive these ideas?!?!?!??!?!?!??!? There are a lot of different kinds of cherry soda. I couldn't even begin to start listing the different kinds unless I actually went there.(Which I might be doing on our way back from Mexico. We might be staying to do a few things in LA. Wouldn't it be fun?!)

You can order soda off the website, www.sodapopstop.com. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think there's some club soda in the fridge... Tonic water, anyone?