Posted by:
Brother Of Jerry
(
)
Date: May 21, 2022 03:02PM
I've posted about Utah and their "dirty soda" craze in the past. This week, it is a feature story in WaPo. The only new thing is that the
chains are expanding out of Utah, into surrounding states, and there is apparently one in Washington DC, which has more than its fair share of Mormons. Mormons make good government bureaucrats, but I digress.
Dirty sodas also seem to be having a moment on TikTok. Young Utah Mormon moms and TikTok strike me as a match made in heaven. Pardon my stereotype.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/05/05/dirty-soda-tiktok-trend/From the (rather long) article:
But it isn’t Milwaukee, where Laverne famously worked at Shotz Brewery, that’s most associated with sodas gone wild — it’s Utah, where chains catering to a Mormon clientele offer bubbly drinks mixed with all manner of adornments, from mango puree to watermelon syrup to coconut cream. The drinks are often referred to as “Utah Dirty Sodas,” they’re so associated with the Beehive State — although the companies that started there are expanding beyond the “Mormon corridor” across Idaho and Arizona and spilling into other regions of the country.
Cooking show host and cookbook author Kelsey Nixon, who was raised in Utah and attended Brigham Young University, said the appeal of the drinks to young TikTokers is exactly what made them popular among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — namely, that they mimic some of what others enjoy about alcohol: They are highly customizable and often enjoyed in social settings. They might have playful names, and they offer the feeling of indulging in a vice, albeit a sanctioned one. (Hot caffeinated drinks such as coffee and tea are forbidden by the LDS Church health manual, but caffeine, the church clarified in 2012, is okay in cold drinks.) “There’s the 17 year-old who can’t drink alcohol legally thinking, ‘This is cool that I can participate in a kind of drinks culture,’ ” she says.
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The rest of the article goes on about the history of adulterated soda drinks, and the author mixes and tries one. She finds the interplay of flavors interesting, but the lime juice curdles the cream and it is blindingly sweet.
Note that the article did use the full name of the church on first reference, then switched to "LDS" on further references. WaPo is a high class outfit, after all. ;)