I’ve always wondered this…. especially when a bottle of other soda has usually around the same amount, but is extremely sweeter.
In: Chemistry
Quinine is tonic waters distinctive flavor. But the sweetness is absolutely there, it might just be less perceptible than a Coca Cola or other soft drink. Compare tonic water with sugarless soda water and you can absolutely taste the sugar.
Tonic water has quinine in it which is an anti-malarial medicine. It was used by the British Army in expeditions (or worse) in India and Africa to stave off malaria.
Quinine comes from tree bark and it is extremely bitter. Thus, the quinine and water mixture is loaded up with sugar so it doesn’t taste as horrible. This is also why we have gin & tonics, British soldiers had a lot of gin, quinine and sugar. Gin and sugar make quinine water tolerable.
If it’s really tonic water (meaning it contains quinine), I believe the quinine is very bitter.
Quinine is bitter as hell. You counteract the bitter by adding sugar. Get some bakers chocolate and get some dark chocolate. The dark chocolate might not seem that sweet until you compare it to the bakers chocolate.
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The sugar is to counteract the bitterness of the quinine. Tonic is, essentially, bubbly water with quinine added to it as an easy way to ingest an anti-malarial. The British used to drink tonic water with gin to sweeten the taste and then sugar was added to the tonic too. Meanwhile, the French drank Dubonnet in North Africa.
There are a great many flavourful aperitifs out there to counteract quinine’s bitterness I believe. I couldn’t find the original article I once read about the ones across Europe but…
This handy article from [NPR](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/12/17/167488498/elixirs-made-to-fight-malaria-still-shine-on-the-modern-bar?t=1590617720694) sums it up nicely and gives a bit more info about antimalarials too.
tonic water tastes definitely sweet. there’s a clear, distinct sweet aftertaste to the bitterness; something you don’t really get with regular bubbly water.
Humans are very good at tasting bitter flavors. Likely because there are lots of toxic compounds with an oral exposure route that taste bitter. Being really good at tasting poison likely provides an evolutionary advantage.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK279408/
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131111185522.htm
I don’t understand how people can’t taste how sweet tonic water is. Yes, it has a bitter flavor, but that doesn’t negate the sugar. Several times I’ve heard from people on low carb diets talk about how they will drink gin and tonic thinking that tonic water is like club soda / soda water. No! It has almost as much sugar as a Coke or Pepsi.
The quinine reason has been explained several times on here, so I am just hijacking this thread for a couple of fun tidbits about Tonic Water and Quinine.
First. If you kinda like Tonic water, but often find it to be too bitter and want a sweeter more palatable alternative. Try Mediterranean Tonic, especially the Fever-Tree brand. It’s incredible. If you want something a little more unique try Aegean Tonic it has a more cucumbery taste and is fantastic on a hot day.
Another fun fact. The hydroxychloroquine that Donald Trump was touting as a miracle cure for Covid-19 is a member of an entire class of chemicals that are based on the the chemistry of Quinine. Quinine is naturally occurring in a tree bark, while hydroxychloroquine and similar drugs are engineered. They both function primarily by surpressing your immune system to prevent it from attacking itself. Don’t think that drinking Gin and Tonics will help with Covid-19 though. First off hydroxychloroquine has been shown to have only some very limited applications in Covid-19 treatment. Secondly the differences are severe enough that it’s hardly going to be the same thing. It would be kinda like trying to use a TI-83 to break up with your girlfriend over a zoom call since its still a computer.
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