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.
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