Caffeine Test

SODA sponsor and teacher Kari Phlegar works the table in the cafeteria, selling soda floats to students for $2. – ASHLEY RICHARDSON

ST. PAUL, Minn.
Ever asked the soda jerk for a ginger yip, an egg cream, or a green dragon phosphate? For generations soda fountains were an integral part of American life President Harry Trumans first job was in a Missouri soda fountain and movie star Lana Turner was discovered in a Hollywood soda fountain.

But if you thought soda fountains had gone the way of the telegraph and the Edsel, think again.

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazines restaurant critic, joined Tom Crann Thursday on MPRs All Things Considered and said that soda fountains are back in a big way.

Below is an edited transcription of their conversation.

Tom Crann: First, we should say that soda fountains never completely went away.

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl: Thats right. St. Paul Corner Drug, on the corner of Snelling and St. Clair in St. Paul (map), has had an operating soda fountain since 1922. They have Kemps ice-cream, chocolate syrup, and you can sit at the counter at one of the six stools and have a chocolate-soda-chocolate float while you wait for your prescription.

Crann: Soda and medicine I know thats a traditional connection, but still it seems odd.

Moskowitz Grumdahl: Yes. Legend has it that the first sweet sodas were invented essentially as chasers for yucky, yucky medicine. This was back in the 1800s, when pharmacists were making medicines from things like kola nuts where all the colas come from. Theres actually another soda fountain at a drug store in tiny Olivia (map), which is due west of the Twin Cities, about half-way to South Dakota.

Crann: But thats not what youre here to talk about.

Moskowitz Grumdahl: No. I bring news of the new soda fountain renaissance. Lets talk about two places. One in St. Paul, one in Minneapolis. Lets start in St. Paul.

I spent my morning at the construction site which will soon be Lyndens Soda Fountain, in the space that used to be Kopplins, next to the Nook on Hamline Avenue (map).

Its going to be beautiful. White marble counter, eight stools, a classic St. Paul soda fountain which was rescued from a St. Paul church, the Christ Household of Faith near Cathedral Hill, brought to Chicago and full rehabbed, then brought back here. Theyre going to have all the classic glass service-ware, and are sourcing syrups and such from a Brooklyn artisanal soda supplier called Pamp;H, so theyll have classics like lime phosphates, but also new-fangled flavors like hibiscus. It will open this spring, possibly as early as mid-April.

Crann: Okay, so should I presume that Lyndens will have the best Twin Cities egg cream?

Moskowitz Grumdahl: No. You should presume that youre going to have to do a serious artisanal egg cream taste-test. Your other destination will be in Minneapolis (map), at the brand new Eat Street Social, where a couple of famous local culinary-cocktail bartenders, Nick Kosevich and Ira Koplowitz, have engineered a total from-scratch soda fountain.

They also run a bitters company, Bittercube, in Madison, Wis., and so they have sources for all the crazy things that pharmacists at the turn of the last century used to use. For instance, they cook down two sorts of cocoa nibs (roasted, shelled, but otherwise unprocessed chocolate beans) into an alcohol-free liquor, and then blend that with powdered Dutch chocolate, for their egg cream.

Crann: If I remember correctly, an egg cream has neither egg nor cream?

Moskowitz Grumdahl: Right, its chocolate, milk, and bubbly water. Whats genius about Eat Street Social is that they installed a special super-charged bubbly water dispenser, the kind that soda jerks used to use a hundred years ago, and that super-charged water allows them to suspend more flavor compounds in their sodas. The egg cream is deeply chocolatey, the Green River Phosphate is ultra-lime-flavored, and their house-made cola has more cola flavor, because its literally made from Kola nuts.

Crann: I guess everything is new again.

Moskowitz Grumdahl: And if youve always wanted to be soda jerk, the job opportunities have exploded.

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Resources

• Daras full Eat Street Social review

NEW YORK — US carbonated soft drink consumption fell faster last year as strength in energy drinks failed to offset weakness in traditional sodas from The Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc., according to Reuters, citing Beverage Digest.

Total sales volume of soda fell about 1% in 2011 to 9.27 billion cases, said Beverage Digest, about the same level it was in 1996. Sales volume fell 0.5% in 2010.

Excluding energy drinks such as Red Bull and Rockstar, soda volume was down 1.5% last year, the industry publication said.

Carbonated soft drinks, while still the biggest category, are playing a declining role in Americans beverage consumption, it said.

Soda sales in the United States grew about 3% annually throughout most of the 1990s but began to slow in 1999. Sales have been in decline since 2005 as increasingly health-conscious consumers turn to options they see as healthier, such as bottled water, juice and tea.

Americans on average drank 714 eight-ounce servings of carbonated soft drinks last year, down from 728 in 2010, Beverage Digest said, noting that consumption was the lowest since 1987.

At retail, revenue rose about 2% to $75.7 billion.

The publication estimated that prices were up about 3% last year as manufacturers sought to pass through some of the increase in costs of raw materials including corn syrup, used as a sweetener. Those price increases likely contributed to the volume weakness.

Including bottled waters, juice drinks, teas and sports drinks, bottled beverage sales rose 0.8% to 15.2 billion cases in 2011, said the publication. That represented a slowdown from 2010, when sales rose 1.7%.

According to separate data released by Beverage Marketing Corp, premium-priced drinks such as bottled tea and coffee, sports drinks and energy drinks performed well in 2011, said Reuters.

Still, the research, consulting and financial services firm said the economy had an impact.

Higher prices did almost certainly contribute to 2011s deceleration as lower-income consumers continued to struggle, the company said.

According to Beverage Digest, the top four sodas–Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi-Cola and Mountain Dew–all saw declining sales last year. Of those, Cokes market share was flat, while the other three all lost share.

Including all bottled drinks, Coca-Cola cornered 34% of the market, followed by PepsiCo with nearly 27%, Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc. with 11%, and Nestle Waters North America with about 10%, said the report.

The bottom line is that Americans need to pay more attention to what theyre drinking, said the studys lead author, Lawrence de Koning, a research fellow in the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. The first thing to do is to reduce the intake of sodas and then eventually eliminate them, de Koning said.

Related story: 5 great reasons to kick the soda habit

The new research found no connection between artificially sweetened drinks — in other words, diet sodas — and heart disease risk.But there are probably better choices, such as water, coffee and tea, de Koning said. Besides, another recently published study did indeed find a link between a daily diet soda and heightened heart attack risks.

This study adds to the accumulating evidence that sugary beverages hurt your health, said Dr. Y. Claire Wang, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

The new report looked at data gathered as part of the Health Professionals Follow-up study, which has been gathering information on 42,883 men for the last 22 years. During that time there were 3,683 heart attacks in the men, some fatal and some not. And although this data set focused solely on men, past research has linked womens soda habits with heart disease, too.

When de Koning and his colleagues looked at sugar-sweetened beverages, they found a strong correlation between sugary drinks and heart attack risk. And that link stayed strong even after the researchers accounted for factors such as smoking, physical activity, alcohol intake, vitamin use, family history and BMI.

And while link doesnt absolutely prove that sugary drinks increase the risk of heart disease, there is evidence from other studies showing that these beverages have an impact on risk factors, de Koning said. In one study, for example, volunteers who decreased sugary soda consumption experienced a reduction in blood pressure levels, he added.

At the end of the day, Wang said, the best thing to drink is still water.

Related:

• BPA levels soar after lunching on canned soup
• Still too much sugar in kids diets, researchers say
• 5 great reasons to kick your soda habit

Commerce Street Soda Shop offers retro feel, nostalgic fare and a few modern choices. / Amanda Sowards/Advertiser

SodaStream Wants You to Hug a Tree, Drink a Soda

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Rick Aristotle Munarriz

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A new multilingual poker room has just been launched by one on the main online poker publishers with the intention of becoming an alternative to the current online poker monopoly.

Barcelona, Spain (PRWEB) March 21, 2012

POKER hit the web in the mid 00′s and has since never ceased to grow in popularity. But governments around the world have decided that now is the time to impose regulations on online gambling and as a result players may have noticed that playing poker with real money is getting tougher and tougher (especially if players are living in the US!).

In the mean time, playing poker with virtual chips on social networks has never been as trendy, fun and easy! Don’t deny it; even moms and little sisters are on it… These so called social poker games owe their popularity to the fact that while being built around a game usually found in a casino; because players can’t cash out winnings, for legislators, it’s not gambling so they (and the companies running them) are alright with them.

Now the companies running these models are seriously considering adding cash out options once the game will be regulated, and the companies running real money poker rooms are looking at social poker games as a way of not only offering a different version of the game, but also penetrating virgin territories such as social networks or mobile devices.

It’s going to be a war of the worlds when these gaming giants collide, but undoubtedly poker players will come out as winners, as the competition will generate new products and new offers for the end users…

In the mist of it all, Cmedia, a company based on the Spanish coast of Barcelona has launched Soda Poker, a social poker room that aims to offer a serious alternative to other poker rooms.

The name Cmedia may not ring a bell, but if you have ever been on a website related to poker or any other form of online gambling, chances are you were on one of theirs: with over 1000 websites online, they are amongst the biggest online gambling publishers in the world… so players can trust they know what they are doing when it comes to online poker. They are the people behind Freepoker.org and Pokerholdem.com.

Soda Poker is easy because unlike any other poker texas holdem sites site players can register and play for free in just a few clicks. It’s quick, easy and simple. It gets users seated at the poker table in just a few seconds without asking them for their bank account details, or their grand mother’s maiden name.

And it’s freemium, meaning that every day; players can come back and play without having to deposit real money. But if they want to play the higher stakes they can always buy into the premium model and get more chips allowing them to play at a higher level.

Because players don’t actually bet with real money, Soda Poker is a totally risk free game, they can just play for the fun of the game! It’s really the closest they’ll get to playing a home game with their friends, and that’s why it’s one of the fastest growing social poker communities and one of the hottest places to be dealt cards on the web right now!

Contact

CMEDIA 2007 SL

Calle Valencia 231, 2-2

08007 BARCELONA – ESPAA

Tel : +34 93 528 89 54 / +34 93 530 61 13

Fax : +34 935507282.

Email: oliver@cmedia.es

About Cmedia

Cmedia are the leading distributors of qualified traffic for the online gambling industry. Their sound expertise in search engine positioning on premium niches, allows over 15 Million unique gambling visitors to visit Cmedia’s 1000 websites every year. Cmedia’s free poker community websites have organically generated a database of over 2.000.000 poker players growing by over 100.000 new registrations a month. In Spanish and Latin American markets Cmedia’s websites occupy enough positions in the main search engines to capture up to 50% of the organic gambling traffic. Cmedia is a team of 20 professionals, located in the center of Barcelona, Spain.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prweb2012/3/prweb9306277.htm

BY MAURA AMMENHEUSER
MOMARAMA MOM-IN-CHIEF

Sundays column and blog post about kids and soda — and how parents can get the soda out of their diets — prompted a note from Dr. Ernie Medina, Jr., a preventive care specialist with Beaver Medical Group in Redlands. (You can read the initial post here.)

Sundays post contained a tip from wellness coach Rachael Pontillo, suggesting adding selter to water or juice as a substitute for soda, if kids need a transitional drink.

Medina took issue with something, saying the seltzer contains carbonic acid, so it does have acidity, which is one of the problems with soda.

Asked about Medinas concerns, Pontillo responded: I did find out some information about this. It turns out [Medina] was correct. The carbonation process does produce carbonic acid, which does lower the pH of the water to varying levels depending on the amount of carbon dioxide added.

So be aware that seltzer isnt a completely wholesome alternative to soda — but its still a handy way to add fizz to plain water if that will help you and your kids transition from cola to water, milk or other beverages that lack the sugar, caffeine and artificial ingredients that make soda such a nightmarish nutritional choice.

Have you weaned your children off soda? How did you do it? Join the conversation at blogs.inlandsocal.com/moms, PE.com or Momaramas page on Facebook. Or send an email to pe.momarama@yahoo.com. Momarama shares readers emailed comments with their permission.

I did find out some information about this. It turns out the guy was correct…the carbonation process does produce carbonic acid which does lower the pH of the water to varying levels depending on the amount of CO2 added.

How many times have you wanted a special, celebratory drink that didnt contain alcohol? Well, this is where Dry Soda will become your very best friend. The Seattle-based company has a line of carbonated, flavored drinks, designed to be enjoyed with food in place of wine or beer (the creator was actually inspired by her pregnancies and having to abstain from alcohol!) or to be mixed in with your favorite spirits for a unique cocktail experience. Having only sampled a few flavors, I was thrilled to be able to finally try the entire line, thanks to Dry — especially juniper berry and the newer wild lime flavor. Click through to see all of the offerings.

It seems like a new study linking soda consumption to poor health makes headlines each week. And whether youre choosing the full-sugar or diet variety, the data shows that you may be putting yourself at a heightened risk for everything from heart attack to osteoporosis.

Most recently, a study linking sugary soda consumption to heart attacks in men made headlines this week. So should you be concerned about drinking the sweet stuff? Certainly, full-sugar soda is high in calories and can contribute to weight gain. Its also well-documented that liquid sugar consumption leads to a high level of fasting glucose: a precursor to diabetes. But what else could soda do? And is diet as bad as full-sugar? The latest research below: