My BIL, who thinks he knows everything, tried to convince me that when soda is made, they add caffeine to it, and when they make decaf, they chemically remove it. This seems rather counter-intuitive to me if they add caffeine, then why not just make a run without adding it? But since he ‘knows everything’ he swears that is how it is made. Can someone how true or not this is?
In: Chemistry
In most cases, they just don’t bother adding caffeine. Why would you? Most of the caffeine in soda comes from caffeine that was removed from decaffeinating coffee, you have to add it to the soda, there’s no reason to add it just to remove it.
However, there’s a grain of truth, kinda, in what he’s talking about for certain sodas. Some colas use kola nuts, which do contain natural caffeine. If you want a decaf cola that uses kola nuts you need to decaffeinate the kola nuts before processing (like we do for coffee), which is a chemical process, or remove it from the cola afterwards. I have no idea why you’d do the latter though…the technology to decaffeinate stuff before you actually make the drink out of it is pretty well established.
Kinda both.
Cola sodas were originally made with kola nuts, which provided flavor and caffeine.
In that case, creating a decaffe version would require removing the caffeine from the nuts.
Most modern colas, including Coca cola, use synthetic flavors in place of natural kola nuts, so they don’t have to decaffeinate them. They just don’t add caffeine.
Well he’s not wrong assuming we’re talking about colas like Coke or Pepsi. These are traditionally flavored by the Kola nut, which contains caffeine so for a cola to be caffeine free it must go through the process of decaffeination however pretty much all modern sodas that have caffeine have most of it added to them – caffeine that has been removed from other products, mostly decaffeinated coffee.
On the other hand non-cola sodas like Sprite or Root Beer have no ingredients with caffeine naturally in them so they don’t need to be decaffeinated to be caffeine free – but ones that are caffeinated like Barq’s have it added.
With all this talk about adding/removing caffeine from different items, I’d like to ask a follow up question: What actually is caffeine? I obviously know it’s in coffee, soda, tea, etc. and gives you a burst of energy.. but can you see it? Hold it? What does it look like to add caffeine into something? I’ve never thought about this until now. Thanks.
Technically, you’re both right. Decaffeinated does absolutely mean that the caffeine is removed from something.
There’s no such thing as decaf soda. There’s caffeine-free soda, which is made exactly the way you think it is.
However, kola nuts do contain a small amount of caffeine. In order to make truly caffeine-free colas, they would have to be decaffeinated. However, for the most part, the manufacturers don’t bother.
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