Food in the past could be horrifying. Prior to the introduction of
regulations like the United States Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, it
was disturbingly common for manufacturers to add all sorts of inedible
or even genuinely toxic substances to food to make it last longer, make
it look more appetizing, or cut down on expensive ingredients and
maximize profits. Boric acid and formaldehyde in milk. Brick dust in
cinnamon. Bone meal or plaster of Paris in flour and bread. Lead-based
dyes in jelly and jam. At one point, S.E. Massengill Company even added
diethylene glycol to a common medicine to help make it taste sweeter and
more easy to consume… For the uninitiated, diethylene glycol, commonly
used today in antifreeze and as a solvent, is highly poisonous, and was
known to be so at the time as well. Yet the substance was nonetheless
added to the medicine targeted at children anyway, with about 100 deaths
resulting before they recalled the medicine. Although noteworthy even
with the recall, didn’t bother to tell the doctors prescribing it that
there was any urgency in that, nor the danger their existing stocks of
the medicine posed if they didn’t return them, and instead, continued to
sell it.
The owner of the company, Dr. Samuel Evans Massengill, responded to the
outrage over the deaths by simply stating, “My chemists and I deeply
regret the fatal results, but there was no error in the manufacture of
the product. We have been supplying a legitimate professional demand… I
do not feel that there was any responsibility on our part.”
Much more on this story and how it finally got the government to step in
and start regulating consumable products later in the Bonus Facts, and
how this all led to Kinder Surprise Eggs being illegal in the United
States. Which, yes, they still are. Watch to the end before commenting
I’m wrong, and you’ll save yourself having to edit your comment.
But for now, other questionable substances were part of the appeal of
the product itself - most infamously the cocaine in Coca-Cola. Paired
with caffeine from the Kola nut, this ingredient was originally chosen
by the drink’s inventor, pharmacist John Pemberton, as a treatment for
morphine addiction and a stimulating alternative to alcohol. Cocaine was
not fully eliminated from the official formula until 1929, though the
Coca-Cola company continues to use processed coca leaves in the drink’s
manufacture, being the largest consumer of that plant outside of the
illegal drug trade. But while it is the most famous example, Coca-Cola
was not the only classic soft drink to contain psychoactive drugs, with
another iconic brew originally including a mood-altering medication
still taken by millions of people to this day.
This is the weird forgotten history of 7UP.
Author: Gilles Messier
Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila
0:00 Intro
2:37 Why People Started Drinking Carbonated Water, and Discovering Lithium
4:55 The Origins of 7Up and Why the Drugs?
16:22 What Does Lithium Actually Do to You?
18:55 The Elixir Sulfanilamide Incident and Why Kinder Surprise Eggs are Still Illegal in the United States
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
