There are many specialty soft drinks. Mineral waters are very popular in Europe and Latin America . Kava , made from roots of a bushy shrub, Piper methysticum , is consumed by the people of Fiji and other Pacific islands. In Cuba people enjoy a carbonated cane juice; its flavour comes from unrefined syrup. In tropical areas, where diets frequently lack sufficient protein , soft drinks containing soybean flour have been marketed. In Egypt carob (locust bean) extract is used. In Brazil a soft drink is made using maté as a base. The whey obtained from making buffalo cheese is carbonated and consumed as a soft drink in North Africa . Some eastern Europeans enjoy a drink prepared from fermented stale bread. Honey and orange juice go into a popular drink of Israel.

The term soft drink was originated to distinguish the flavoured drinks from hard liquor , or distilled spirits . Soft drinks were recommended as a substitute in the effort to change the hard-drinking habits of early Americans. Indeed, health concerns of modern consumers led to new categories of soft drinks emphasizing low calorie count, low sodium content, no caffeine , and “all natural” ingredients.

Soft drink , any of a class of nonalcoholic beverages, usually but not necessarily carbonated, normally containing a natural or artificial sweetening agent, edible acids, natural or artificial flavours, and sometimes juice. Natural flavours are derived from fruits , nuts , berries , roots , herbs, and other plant sources. Coffee , tea , milk , cocoa , and undiluted fruit and vegetable juices are not considered soft drinks.

History of soft drinks

The first marketed soft drinks appeared in the 17th century as a mixture of water and lemon juice sweetened with honey. In 1676 the Compagnie de Limonadiers was formed in Paris and granted a monopoly for the sale of its products. Vendors carried tanks on their backs from which they dispensed cups of lemonade.

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Carbonated beverages and waters were developed from European attempts in the 17th century to imitate the popular and naturally effervescent waters of famous springs, with primary interest in their reputed therapeutic values. The effervescent feature of the waters was recognized early as most important. Flemish scientist Jan Baptista van Helmont first used the term gas in his reference to the carbon dioxide content. French physician Gabriel Venel referred to aerated water, confusing the gas with ordinary air. British scientist Joseph Black named the gaseous constituent fixed air.

Robert Boyle, an Anglo-Irish philosopher and scientist who helped found modern chemistry, published his Short Memoirs for the Natural Experimental History of Mineral Waters in 1685. It included sections on examining mineral springs, on the properties of the water, on its effects upon the human body, and, lastly, “of the imitation of natural medicinal waters by chymical and other artificial wayes.”

Numerous reports of experiments and investigations were included in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in the late 1700s, including the studies of Stephen Hales, Joseph Black, David Macbride, William Brownrigg, Henry Cavendish, and Thomas Lane.

English clergyman and scientist Joseph Priestley is nicknamed “the father of the soft drinks industry” for his experiments on gas obtained from the fermenting vats of a brewery. In 1772 he demonstrated a small carbonating apparatus to the College of Physicians in London, suggesting that, with the aid of a pump, water might be more highly impregnated with fixed air. French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier made the same suggestion in 1773.

To Thomas Henry, an apothecary in Manchester, England, is attributed the first production of carbonated water, which he made in 12-gallon barrels using an apparatus based on Priestley’s design. Swiss jeweler Jacob Schweppe read the papers of Priestley and Lavoisier and determined to make a similar device. By 1794 he was selling his highly carbonated artificial mineral waters to his friends in Geneva; later he started a business in London.

At first, bottled waters were used medicinally, as evidenced in a letter written by English industrialist Matthew Boulton to philosopher Erasmus Darwin in 1794:

J. Schweppe prepares his mineral waters of three sorts. No. 1 is for common drinking with your dinner. No. 2 is for nephritick patients and No. 3 contains the most alkali given only in more violent cases.

By about 1820, improvements in manufacturing processes allowed a much greater output, and bottled water became popular. Mineral salts and flavours were added—ginger about 1820, lemon in the 1830s, tonic in 1858. In 1886 John Pemberton, a pharmacist in Atlanta, Georgia, invented Coca-Cola, the first cola drink.