Soft drink is a flavored, nonalcoholic beverage prepared with carbonated water. Soft drinks are called soft to distinguish them from hard (alcoholic) drinks. Soft drinks are also called soda pop, soda, or pop. Cola is by far the most widely consumed soft drink. Other flavors include lemon-lime, orange, ginger ale, and root beer.
Soft drinks are popular in many countries throughout the world. In the United States, people consume more soft drinks than any other type of beverage other than water. On the average, people in the United States drink about 40 gallons (150 liters) of soft drinks per person annually.
How soft drinks are made.
Soft drinks consist of carbonated water and syrup. Carbonated water is produced by adding carbon dioxide gas to water under pressure. The gas makes the water bubble and fizz. In most cases, syrup is made of a concentrate and sweeteners. A concentrate includes a blend of flavor and acid. Concentrates for most soft drinks also include coloring. Syrup can also be prepared directly from individual ingredients.
Many of the flavorings found in soft drinks come from such natural sources as fruit juices and oils obtained from roots, citrus fruit peels, and leaves of various plants. Some flavorings are artificial, though many are similar to natural flavorings in taste. Citric acid and phosphoric acid give soft drinks a tart taste. Caramel provides the brown color of most cola drinks. Other types of soft drinks use a variety of natural and artificial colors. The sweetener may come from corn, sugar beets, or sugar cane. Low-calorie sweeteners, such as saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame-K, and sucralose, are used in diet soft drinks (see Artificial sweetener).
Soft drinks are generally distributed by the franchise system. Under this system, a soft drink company produces the soft drink concentrate or syrup and sells it to a bottler. The bottler adds carbonated water to the syrup, or carbonated water and sweetener to the concentrate, to make the soft drink. Then the bottler cans or bottles the drink and sells it. Under the terms of the franchise, each bottling firm agrees to follow certain formulas established by the soft drink company. In return, the bottler receives exclusive rights from the soft drink company to sell a particular soft drink in a specific area. See Franchise.
History.
Many soft drinks, especially colas, had their start in the late 1800s in the southern United States. Drugstore soda fountains originally sold many of the beverages as tonics. Individual druggists mixed their own special tonics as syrups. It later became popular to add soda water—that is, carbonated water—to these syrups before drinking them. Many restaurants still dispense soft drinks in much the same way, using equipment that mixes the soft drink syrup with carbonated water at the time the beverage is sold. Soon, the druggists discovered that there was a market for soft drinks in bottles, and they began to sell the beverages door-to-door and in grocery stores.
In time, syrup makers founded larger soft drink companies and started to sell their syrup to bottlers. Today, the main soft drink companies in the world include the Coca-Cola Company; PepsiCo, Inc.; and Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, Inc.
Soft drink consumption has increased significantly since the mid-1960’s. Since then, soft drink companies have made their products available in more convenient packages, such as metal cans and many types of glass and plastic containers. In addition, beverage makers have developed a wider variety of soft drinks, including diet and low-sodium drinks.
