Pop V.S. Soda

Today, I ocntinue with my intellectual assault on the abnormally high consumption of carbonated sugar-sweetened beverages by young adults and teenagers.

But let us diverge today to really figure out which it really is. Is it pop? soda? coke? fizzy lifting drinks? Hmmm... if you are wondering where this post idea comes from, well the talk sparked quite a debate a few weeks ago when I was at dinner with friends. I grew up in MD where sprite, coka cola, root beer, ginger ale, all of that was called SODA. When I went out to UT for school I found people asking me if I had any POP...needless to say that when I started to break it down and pop, lock, n drop it...that isn't quite what they meant. Then awkwardly, I came down to TX where yall western southerners call all of those drinks, COKE. I will never forget when someone asked, "Do you want a coke" and a friend replied "Yes", then they were asked "What kind?" and they asked for a sprite. WHAT?!! How does that one work? Well it is a mystery that I intend to solve.

Let's start with this:

Pop= Blue
Soda= Yellow
Coke= Red
Other= Green
No Data= Purple

Darker colors means a higher percentage say that word.


Next, Let's think about the history a little bit.

So where did the term soft drink come from? Another weird word. It was chosen because a hard was used to describe alcoholic beverages, hence the antonym soft was the obvious choice for non-alcoholic beverage. And beverage came from the Old French root word beivre (to drink) during their conquest of England in 1066.

So technically Soda was the first colloquial word used to describe soda-pop. Soda really then is an abbreviation for soda-water or soda-pop. Pop being the onomatopoeic term used to describe the sound a soda makes when opened. I don't think I will ever understand using the term coke though.

LAst, I think we could argue all stinkin day about which word should be used, but why don't we just take the time in our lives the next time we might get a bit flustered when we don't know what we are ordering or what someone else wants, and lets just learn to laugh it off. No one has to be right, and just because someone uses a different word doesn't mean they are stupid or hicks. I mean really, who didn't get a laugh out of me dancing away that first time in Utah?

But of course SodA is still the right word ;) Ya Northeast Coast!

Speaking of getting some laughs and having some fun with soda check this out!