What makes soda so special

This taste could be due to more than just the lack of acid, Bryant adds. A close up look at sparkling water. Scientists have also found that bubbles increase the perception of sourness. Bryant and colleagues collected evidence showing that bubbles can enhance the pungency of carbonation.

A study published on July 10 in Neuropsychologia showed that foods with rougher textures are rated as more sour. Astringent drinks, like lemonade or tannin-heavy wine, wash out mucins and give that clean-mouth feeling. And just like all cold beverages, chilled seltzer stimulates nerves that detect cooler temperatures. From personal experience, we probably all agree that seltzer cans left in the sun are less refreshing on a hot day than the chilled version. By the way, only a small amount of the fizz released from a bottled beverage makes it into the stomach.

Seltzer scientists agree that our love for carbonation and other pain-inducing foods like chili peppers is learned. Children develop strong flavor associations.

Consider spicy desserts: Habanero jam, kiwi salsa, or ghost pepper brownies. Pair the spice of a hot chili with a pleasurable carbohydrate like sugar, and over time you develop a preference for the painful taste. This may be true for seltzer and soda too. And many of us start with soda and graduate to seltzer water.

Some food for thought: if our passion for bubbles comes from a previous love for sodas, then will new, health-conscious generations avoid soda and never learn to love seltzer? Catherine Woods is a mass media science and engineering fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Support Provided By: Learn more. Thursday, Nov The Latest. Cans of carbonated soft drinks contain carbon dioxide under pressure so that the gas dissolves in the liquid drink. Once the the can is opened, all of the gas will eventually escape from the liquid as bubbles, and the soda will go "flat. If the can is shaken, however, or if the liquid is poured quickly into a glass, then the bubbles formed by turbulence provide an easier way for the dissolved gas to escape.

It's difficult for the gas to escape from an undisturbed liquid because of the liquid's surface tension, which is the energy required to separate the liquid molecules from one another as a bubble forms.

For a tiny bubble just getting started, the amount of energy required per molecule of gas in the bubble is relatively large. So getting started is the difficult stage. Once it is formed, however, a smaller amount of energy again on a per molecule basis is needed for additional liquid molecules to vaporize and expand the bubble. Because shaking the can introduces lots of small bubbles into the liquid, the dissolved gas can more easily vaporize by joining existing bubbles rather than forming new ones.

By avoiding the difficult step of bubble formation, the gas can escape more quickly from shaken soda, thus resulting in more fizz. Drinking soda regularly doesn't just give you less energy; it also slows down your swimmers.

The Rochester Young Men's Study , which examined healthy young men at the University of Rochester, found that participants who drank more sugar-sweetened beverages, including soda, experienced lower sperm motility. Men's fertility isn't the only thing that can be disrupted by soda consumption. According to a study published in the journal Epidemiology , consuming just one or more sugar-sweetened beverage a day—by either a man or woman—is associated with a decreased chance of getting pregnant.

Soda has been linked to poor kidney function according to a study out of Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan. Researchers studied 8, participants who all had normal kidney function at the beginning of the study, split into one group who drank no soda, one who had one a day, and another who had two a day.

Not surprisingly, the group who drank two sodas a day had a much higher chance of developing proteinuria, a condition in which protein isn't properly filtered by the kidneys and a sign of chronic kidney disease.

Scary stuff. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in adults in America, accounting for , lives a year, according to the CDC. Although people typically associate poor heart health with poor lifestyle habits like smoking and not working out, drinking soda should also be on the top of that list.

The researchers found the correlation to be independent of obesity and weight gain alone, and believe soda's inflammatory properties play a role. Sugary beverages have also been linked to higher levels of triglycerides and low levels of HDL, or good cholesterol, which all lead to poor heart function.

No surprise here: All of the sugar consumed by drinking soda is horrible for your pearly whites. Couple that with the acidity of carbonated beverages that destroy tooth enamel, and you have a dentist's nightmare. Soda leeches calcium from your teeth and leads to dental erosion, according to a study published in the International Journal of Dentistry.

Aside from severe tooth decay, darker-colored sodas like colas can also stain the surface of your teeth. That's nothing to smile about. About 1 in 13 or 25 million Americans suffer from asthma , a lung condition that's usually considered a genetic disease triggered by allergens such as pollen and mold.

But sugar-sweetened beverages can also lead to the onset of asthma, according to a study out of Australia. Researchers found that high levels of soft drink consumption were associated with an increased risk of asthma or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder COPD. So take a deep breath… and put down the soft drink. Even though your bones naturally become more brittle as you age, drinking soda can exacerbate this problem.