I saw a friend drinking a Tab Cola this weekend, and we joked about how Tab was the acronym that described the “Totally Artificial Beverage” project at Coca Cola. Supposedly they were trying to create a drink with only synthetic substances, but were disappointed when they had to use water as an ingredient - - thus the funny taste. We then joked that the story was probably an urban legend.
I googled “Totally Artificial Beverage” this morning and found precious little to confirm or disprove the story. Snopes has nothing about it.
Do any of you know anything? Are there old threads about Tab? Does anyone other than my friend actually drink the stuff? Would Tab help the Marines take Kandahar?
Wouldn’t anything out of a beverage company be artificial? I mean, there is no Sprite tree is there? Or a Dr. Pepper bush? Or a Hawaiian Punch vine? So wouldn’t anything except for like maybe water, lemonade, and other naturally occuring drinks would be considered artificial?
The concept is that they supposedly wanted all artificial ingredients. No water, no sugar, no corn syrup, no natural flavors, no gum arabics, nothing natural at all in the drink. If you look on a label for Coke, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, and the like, you’ll usually be able to spot some natural ingredients, but the drinks aren’t marketed as natural products.
Theoretically you could make a drink using D[sub]2[/sub]O instead of H[sub]2[/sub]O. Since deuterium exists in only trace quantities in nature, I believe you could classify this as artificial. Also, D[sub]2[/sub]O is relatively non-toxic in small enough quantities – you would probably suffer no ill effects from a glass or two a day. Note that heavy water is extremely expensive, so it wouldn’t be too practical to use in beverages.
This was discussed a few weeks ago here; feel free to search for the thread.
Well, I remember the “Tab joke”, too, but I remember it as a joke, and that’s the punchline–"…but then they discovered they had to use water."
IIRC, Tab had just saccharin, when it first came out, whereas Diet Rite had cyclamates. Then they banned cyclamates and Diet Rite switched over to (I think) saccharin plus some sugar, because that had a better “mouth feel” than just saccharin by itself, although it meant that Tab could run the “just one calorie” ad campaign. So in comparison, Tab did have a strange, “artificial” taste as compared to Diet Rite.
This is a real blast from the past, you know? I haven’t had a Tab in years. How it all comes back…
