Have you ever stashed a Coke in the freezer, hoping to chill it quickly, then forgotten all about it, only to have it explode all over your frozen peas?

Forget pre-mixed rootbeer floats...this nifty little gadget takes floats to the next level.

The Fizz is, essentially, a cheap plastic domed lid with an opening in the middle that holds a straw and is able to suck up liquids without letting them seep out.

As per the video on the item's website, appropriately set to the tune of Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough," the soda enthusiast simply scoops ice cream into the plastic resevoir, screws the lid onto the top of a plastic soda bottle (looks like it has to be plastic, not metal or aluminum), and squeezes the bottle, sucking part of the liquid into the vessel where it mixes with the ice cream for a no-mess float on the go.

This product immediately lost some of its appeal once I realized what it reminds me of: the ACT brand mouthwash that the dentist made me use when I was younger, which also involves squeezing liquid into a plastic resevoir at the top of a bottle.

I immediately thought of using the product to fix a root beer float (probably because that's what the website used as an example, and sometimes I'm easily swayed, especially when it involves refined sugar) but the website offers some other suggestions for flavor combos, including strawberry sherbet/lemon-lime soda, vanilla yogurt/orange soda, or crushed ice and flavored syrup.

If I haven't completely turned you off yet, what do you think? Yay or nay on the soda float-on-the-go?

We've already heard all the reasons why soda is bad for kids, so we won't go into them. Again.

However, we will say that just as bad as soda is the thing that makes kids thirsty for soda in the first place: salt. According to a British study published in an American Heart Association journal, kids who eat salty snacks and meals get thirsty and often turn to sodas to quench their thirst. Researchers go on to say that the salt isn't coming from the salt shaker, but from manufactured food.

The solution? Cut back on salty, processed snacks.

As if we needed to say that.

And no, that's not a typo for "getting out."

According to a report in the British Medical Journal, sugar-sweetened soft drinks are linked to an increased risk of getting gout, a disease that causes painful swelling of the joints known to mostly afflict middle-aged men. The findings come from a study done on 46,393 men over 12 years. The risk of developing gout was 85% higher among men who consume 2+ cans of soda as compared to those who drank less than one soda a month. Sweetened soft drinks contain large amounts of fructose, which causes excess uric acid in the blood, eventually leading to uric acid crystals collecting around the joints.

Of course, the study also found that men who consumed high-fructose fruits like apples and oranges had increased risk of getting gout by 102%.

I'm not sure why this isn't just called National Soda Day or something similar, but I guess there are some carbonated, caffeinated beverages that aren't soda (?).

Since soda drinkers usually have their favorite sodas and don't usually stray away from it (I'm a Diet Pepsi guy after a long affair/distraction with Diet Coke), maybe we can take this day to try a carbonated, caffeinated beverage that we've never tried or maybe one we haven't had in years. I'm going to have some Dr Pepper and see if it still tastes like it did the last time I had it, during the Reagan administration I believe.

I'm not a big fan of Dr. Pepper. It's way, way down on my list when it comes to beverages, right after carrot juice but right before Clamato. But I never thought about having it hot.

But apparently it's popular among some soda drinkers, or at least it was at one point, according to the ad on the right from the 1960s. How do you make Hot Dr. Pepper? Well, you put it in a pan and warm it up until it begins to steam. Then you pour it over slices of lemon. Hmmm...I'll have to try this, for science. I wonder if it works with Pepsi and Coke?

[via Boing Boing]

I grew up in New England, and I'm not sure what other families did, but we never called the nighttime meal "dinner." We always called it "supper." Now I always call it dinner. I don't know when it changed, but somewhere along the line it did.

AOL Food has a fun poll where they ask you what you called certain food things in your region. Did you call it dinner or supper (there's also an "other" option, though I'm not sure what that would be). Sprinkles or Jimmies or 100s and 1000s? Sub, Hero, or Hoagie? Soda, Pop, or Tonic?

Vermont Sweetwater is a small, family owned and operated soda bottling company that makes all natural sodas in eight different flavors. I had heard of, but never seen their products on the shelves before, but when I did I had to try it. The Maple Seltzer is made with fresh Maple tree sap that is lightly carbonated, and sometimes a touch of Maple syrup is added to provide consistency in the flavor. This is because maple sap's flavor can vary quite a bit depending upon the weather and the point in the sap season when it is collected. Besides the Maple Seltzer they also make a Maple soda from maple syrup and carbonated water, but I haven't run across it yet.

The Maple Seltzer has a nice, clean, light, and refreshing taste to it. You can really taste that it is mostly the sap and not much syrup since it doesn't have any of the smoky intensity of maple syrup. It has a really different flavor than I expected and wasn't overwhelming like many sodas and flavored seltzers can be. I'm not a big soda / seltzer drinker except for ginger, root, birch beers, and sarsaparilla; but I really enjoyed this seltzer and would get it again.

Besides the two maple based products, Vermont Maple Soda and Vermont Maple Seltzer, they also make four fruit flavors. Mango Moonshine, Tangerine Cream Twister, County Apple Jack, and Raspberry Rhubarb Ramble. They also have Kickin' Cow-Cola and Rugged Mountain Root Beer. I'm looking forward to trying the maple soda and the root beer some time soon.

When most people choose a diet soda over a regular one, they are doing it for their waistline. In other words, they are only paying attention to the zero or low calorie number. Very rarely are they looking at the caffeine content.

If you are watching your caffeine intake, it's worth noting that most diet versions of their regular counterparts contain more caffeine. Though it's not the highest content among all diet drinks, Diet Coke has 30% more caffeine that regular Coke! To get an idea of how much of a difference there is, and to see how the diet sodas stack up against each other, Diet Blog has put together a list of the 10 Most Caffeinated Diet Drinks. Number one? Pepsi Max, with 69 mg of caffeine. As a reference point, 1 tsp of instant coffee powder has 57 mg of caffeine.

Of course, if you're "dieting," then you might actually appreciate that extra caffeine.

One could scarcely call a pale-green soft drink Pepsi. Nonetheless, here it is. Pepsi Ice Cucumber is an actual product, not a parody along the lines of Beef Twinkies. This bizarre beverage went on sale this week in Japan. As with many new products that experiment with flavors, it's only available for a limited time. I've savored sake with slivers of cucumber in it, but this green concoction strikes me as some sort of Zimalike mutant.

While I'd love to think that Pepsi limited the supply of this new creation to boost future sales, after reading some reactions from bloggers in Japan, I'm not so sure. Japan Probe notes that the label describes the drink as a combination of cucumber and cola, but concludes that it has very little cola flavor. The blogger goes on to say that after the first few intriguing sips, the artificial cucumber renders it nasty. Japan Probe also has a post of some YouTube reactions to Pepsi Ice Cucumber. One fellow said it has a "green flavor, kind of like Satan's in my mouth." Mmm ... devil cola.

Don't you hate it when you ask someone what flavor they would like and they say they don't care, whatever, or surprise me? Well, one Singapore company has come up with the solution for your indecisive friends with the launch of new sodas appropriately named Whatever and Anything.

Anything is their carbonated soda which comes in six flavors: Cola with Lemon, Apple, Fizz Up, Cloudy Lemon and Root Beer. Whatever is non-carbonated teas that come in Ice Lemon, Peach, Jasmine Green Tea, White Grape, Apple, and Chrysanthemum Tea flavors.

So what's the big surprise? The cans aren't labeled beyond the names of 'Anything' and 'Whatever', so you truly don't have a clue which flavor you are getting beforehand.

(via TrendHunter.com)

Fancy yourself a soda connoisseur, or just love free things? Diet 7UP is so sure that you will love their revamped product that they will send out a Taste Challenge Kit right to your door so you can try and compare in the comfort of your own kitchen. Each kit contains the new Diet 7UP as well as two other competing diet lemon/lime soft drinks.

According to the company, Diet 7UP apparently now has more lemon lime flavor and less of the diet-drink aftertaste. I'll let you know if I agree when my kit arrives. This offer appears to be good in both the US and Canada.

Following right in the footsteps of Coca Cola, Pepsico has just announced that they, too, will be adding caffeine content labels to their drinks. The labeling change comes conveniently at the same time as Pepsi is changing the look of their cans in general.

With two major beverage companies on board this new labeling trend, it sets the standard for other soft drink (or "sparkling beverage") manufacturers to add caffeine amounts to their packaging, as well as just to their ingredient lists. Making this information easily available draws attention to the fact that the FDA regulates the amount of caffeine that can be added to products (.02%), as well as to the fact that there are many groups that recommend an upper limit foe caffeine consumption per day The American Dietetic Association recommends no more than 300mg per day, for example.

We don't necessarily think that caffeine will become the next "hot" issue, as there is simply too much to worry about with foie gras and trans fats at the moment, but you never know...

Diet Coke is slightly higher in caffeine than regular Coke. Both are higher in caffeine than Pepsi, which has slightly more caffeine than Diet Pepsi. Either out of a desire to get consumers to sit up and take more notice of their brand, or simply as an attempt to jump on the energy drink bandwagon, Pepsi is rolling out a new, more caffeinated, diet "sparkling beverage." The new soda is called Diet Pepsi MAX.

Pepsi MAX is a diet soda that has been sold outside of the US for almost 15 years, so the fact that the name of the new drink is extremely redundant (a diet diet soda?) shouldn't be entirely confusing because US consumers aren't that familiar with it. The drink is sweetened with a blend of aspartame and acesulfame potassium, both artificial sweeteners, and will contain roughly 5.95 mg of caffeine per ounce of liquid. This puts at a much higher level than Diet Coke (3.8mg) and regular Diet Pepsi (3.0mg), and in the ballpark with Coca-Cola Blak (5.75mg) but not as high as Enviga (8.3mg), Red Bull (9.64mg) or coffee (13.44mg).

Diet Pepsi MAX is being targeted at 25-34 year olds and will hit stores in June

Advertising companies and politicians like to play with semantics for the purpose of changing images. Big soda companies seem to be heavily invested in changing their images this year - with Pepsi completely revamping their packaging and Coke teaming up witt Jay-Z to promote Coke Zero - so it isn't entirely shocking to hear that they no longer want soda to be thought of as "carbonated soft drinks." Instead, they're "sparkling beverages."

In what some might describe as a blending of advertising and politics, the name change represents some social climbing on the part of soda companies. They are trying to distance themselves from their high-calorie, junk food roots, which politicians and other people in positions of power continually hold against them. Unfortunately for the cola companies, soda is so popular that no matter what Coke and Pepsi executives decide to call it, changing the name for the product to "sparkling beverage" is like trying to change the word for "beer": it's just not going to happen.