Exploring our love of fizz.
You know we love our carbonated beverages at Bodha. When created with real ingredients, soft drinks add a little brightness to every meal, lifting spicy foods and complementing dishes.
The soft drink industry is worth an enormous £17 billion, but why are carbonated drinks so popular? And where did the fizz come from?
First a Little History
Joseph Priestley invented carbonated water in 1767 when he discovered a method of infusing water with carbon dioxide. It was, like most wonderful inventions, an accident.
He wrote of the ‘peculiar fascination’ he found in drinking the bubbly water and named the bubbles ‘fixed air’.
Priestley’s carbonation apparatus was a touch inefficient, but in 1783 German Swiss jeweller and amateur scientist Jacob Schweppe developed a practical process for carbonating and bottling fizzy beverages.
The production soon expanded from Geneva to England where consumers used the drink to settle upset stomachs and other ailments.
Now, Priestley’s invention and Schweppe’s large-scale production are responsible for the booming soft drinks industry.
Why Do We Crave Soft Drinks?
It’s all about the thrill (and the science).
Our love of carbonated drinks isn’t born with us, it’s acquired. Watch children drinking a fizzy drink for the first time, is it love at first bubble? Generally, it’s far from it. It takes time for our taste buds to get used to the sensation. So why do we persist?
Paul Wise, a scientist at Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, studied our love of carbonated drinks, wanting to find the reason for our obsession. He believes we may be drawn to the pain.
It’s an odd thought, but similar to the fieriness of chilli or the punch of bitter chocolate or wine, we crave that bite; the slightly painful fizz when the carbon dioxide bubbles touch the sour receptors on our tongue makes us salivate and want more.
Our tongues are designed to taste danger — sour receptors work to protect us from consuming hazardous chemicals — so the degree to which these sour receptors are stimulated may determine whether guzzling a fizzy drink is a pleasurable or painful experience.
Lightly Sparkling Drinks Are Best
Highly carbonated drinks will over-stimulate the sour receptors and can cause physiological reactions such as coughing, sneezing, and tearing up. This is the body’s way of clearing out a potential threat.
We crave a non-threatening thrill. The tongue perceives lightly sparkling beverages as pleasurable; the gentle bubbles allow the natural flavours of the drink to come to life for us to savour and produce a cooling, refreshing feeling.
Luckily for you — we’ve carefully crafted the level of carbonation in our Bodha soft drinks, so you can sip away and let the fizz cool you down and lift your meal and your spirits.
Shop Bodha’s lightly sparkling, Eastern-inspired premium soft drink range and experience the thrill of perfect carbonation today.