Essay

Pop
In 1886 Coca Cola was invented by John S. Pemberton and was considered the first soda pop ever made. About 10 years after that in 1898 Pepsi was started, it was first named Brad’s drink before it was changed in 1903 to Pepsi. Now you may think that there are a lot of different makers of soda, however when it comes down to it there are really on two major producers of soda pop Pepsi and of course Coca Cola. You name any soda pop you can think of, and most of them will fall under these two makers except a few random soda pops. Although soda pop has only two makers there are four basic categories that pop can fall into. One of them is the Mountain Dew category, in this category you have four types of mountain dew, the Original Mountain Dew, Voltage, Livewire, and Code Red will all fall under the category of Mountain Dew. This is the fourth most popular soda pop in the United States as of 2007 behind Coca Cola Classic, Original Pepsi, and Diet Coke (Wikipedia 1). Another category of soda pop is the Cola Drink Category which is the simplest category you could say. It is just your basic Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Coca Cola, and Diet Coke. All of these were the original pops of the United States and have been the foundation of pop ever since pop was created in 1886. The 3rd category of soda pop would be lemon lime. Soda pops that fall under this category would be Sprite and Sierra Mist. As you know Sprite and Sierra Mist do not contain any caffeine. This essentially doesn’t give you as much energy as all the other categories of soda pop. Finally our last category of soda pop would be fruit flavored sodas. These soda pops have the same contents as our cola drinks just fruit flavored mixed in with the pop. Some examples of these soda pops are Wild Cherry Pepsi, Cherry Coke, and Fanta, which are created by Coca Cola and come in strawberry, orange, and grape flavors. Any soda pop you may think of will fall under one of these categories. Although there may be a few exceptions like root beer, all will fall under the four categories of soda pop which I have just stated.
The first category I will tell you about is the cola category. This category consists of Pepsi and Coca Cola. The ingredients of a Pepsi are CARBONATED WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CARAMEL COLOR, SUGAR, PHOSPHORIC ACID, CAFFEINE, CITRIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVORS (Pepsi products info 1). In Coca cola, the ingredients are very similar to that of Pepsi, the ingredients are Carbonated Water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors, caffenine. These two differ from any other of the pops by quite a lot. They are what I call your base or plain pops. Pepsi and Coca Cola can both be very good just not have as much flavor as some of the others. As well these two sodas are what you could say are crisp soda pops. If you try chugging a whole bottle of either you will understand what I’m saying.
The second category of soda pop is mountain dew. Personally this is my favorite pop and category. Mountain Dew consists of the ingredients CARBONATED WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CONCENTRATED ORANGE JUICE, CITRIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVORS, SODIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVES FRESHNESS), CAFFEINE, SODIUM CITRATE, ERYTHORBIC ACID (PRESERVES FRESHNESS), GUM ARABIC, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA (TO PROTECT FLAVOR), BROMINATED VEGETABLE OIL, YELLOW 5 (pepsi product info). Also, there are other mountain dew flavors: Voltage, Code red, and Livewire. All of those flavors have the same ingredients as Mountain Dew just with added flavoring to make each of those pops what they are. An interesting fact that separates mountain dew from all of the categories is the that mountain dew was originally a nickname for whiskey. Of course, now today we know that mountain dew doesn’t contain alcohol, but back in the day it was named after moonshine. It was also called “zero proof” moonshine back in the 1940’s (little known facts about mountain dew). Then in 1973 a new advertising agency, BBDO took over Mountain Dew Account (little known facts about Mountain Dew). That is when it began to have it’s modern look and the change of styles we know Mountain Dew by today.
Our next category is the Lemon Lime soda pop category. This is obviously different from the others since the two pops: Sprite and Sierra Mist has no caffeine. It is the only soda pop that I am aware of that has no caffeine in the United States. Some people may like this for health purposes and some others may not since it doesn’t give them the energy they were looking for. Also lemon lime soda pops have a distinct taste from others because of the lime taste that no other pops have in the United States. The ingriendents for Sierra Mist is CARBONATED WATER, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CITRIC ACID, NATURAL FLAVORS, POTASSIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVES FRESHNESS), POTASSIUM CITRATE, ASCORBIC ACID, CALCIUM DISODIUM EDTA (TO PROTECT FLAVOR)(pepsi product info).
The last category of pop is fruit flavored soda. Obviously if you like fruit you might have more of a tendency to like these. Many soda pops fall under this category such as Wild Cherry Pepsi, Cherry Coke, and all of the fruit flavored Fantas. Most of these soda pops start with all of the normal ingredients such as Coke or Pepsi then have fruit flavors added to them. These pops have come more recently in time. Cherry Coke was made in 1982 and tested by an audience at worlds fair(Wikipedia Cherry Coca Cola 1). As well Wild Cherry Pepsi was started in 1988 and now has changed the name to Pepsi Wild Cherry in 2005.
All in all soda pop has four main categories Cola’s, Lemon Lime Soda’s, Mountain Dew’s, and Fruit Flavored Soda’s. All soda pops fall under these categories except for Root beer. Root beer would make it’s case for it’s own category, but it’s only one soda pop. Therefore it can’t become a category by my standards. In conclusion I would like to leave you with a fact to prove soda pops popularity. This is that soda pop accounts for more than a quarter of all drinks consumed in the United States (The Facts, Stats and Dangers of Soda Pop).

Bibliography

Bibliography
Squires, Sally. "The Facts, Stats and Dangers of Soda Pop." 17 Feb. 2009 .
Pepsi. 17 Feb. 2009 http://www.ask.com/bar?q=pepsi&page=1&qsrc=2417&zoom=%3CKW%3EPepsi%3C%2FKW%3E+Cola+Ingredients%7CCoke+Vs+%3CKW%3EPepsi%3C%2FKW%3E+Facts%7C%3CKW%3EPepsi%3C%2FKW%3E+Bottle&ab=7&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dietpepsi.com%2F
. "Cherry Cola." 17 Feb. 2009 .
What's in Coca Cola." Nutritional Info. 17 Feb. 2009 .

Winter Narrative

One thing that I did over Christmas break was I went over to Brandon Montoya’s house for a New years eve party. The people that were there was Alex my girlfriend, Brice Wolf Brandon’s friend, Brice Wolf’s girlfriend, Damon Brice’s friend, Brice’s parents, Nick Urban, and of course Brandon’s parents. At first I started out by having some Dominos pizza upstairs with everyone around 8 p.m. After that we went to his basement and played a wide variety of games. In his basement he had a Wi, pool table, foosball table, ping pong table and big screen TV that his wi hooked up to. This gave us a lot of options for us to do throughout the night. First I went and watched a little bit of TV before playing the Wi. On the Wi we played bowling which can be quite fun, but can get boring after awhile as well. Then I played a few games of pool with various people, to name a few Brice’s Dad Curt, Alex, and Brandon. After playing those games I chilled out for a little while before I played ping pong with Alex, Brandon’s Dad Leo and Nick. By the time I had got done playing all of these games it was the New Year already and I hadn’t even had realized it. Afterwards around 12:20 a.m. I took Alex home since she had a 12:30 curfew, and chilled out there till about 1:30. After that I went home and the night was over. Looking back on the night I had a good time with all my friends and girlfriend. All the games, food, drinks, friends made it a really good new years. Not to forget, but I had about 5 mountain dews over new years it was quite awesome and I wish I could have them everyday. That just wouldn’t workout with wrestling unfortunately. You see before wrestling when I was in football I had a mountain dew pretty much everyday so it was a rough transition to wrestling without mountain dew. This is what made the having mountain dew on new years such a good thing since I hadn’t had it for at least two months. All in all the New Years eve party was a lot of fun and a memorable time.