3/18/2023 0 Comments Which soda has the most caffeineThe majority of synthetic caffeine is now made in China.ģ Chinese factories together exporting 4 million kg of caffeine alone to the USA every year. A sixteenth of a spoonful will give you the same hit as a large coffee, a quarter tea spoon will lead to a racing heart, sweating and acute anxiety, a tablespoon of caffeine will kill you.īack in 1995, the Pfizer plant in Grocon, Connecticut, had a major accident in which a yellow cloud of lethal nitrogen oxide escaped the plant and the entire factory had to be evacuated.īut, this synthetic caffeine story is no longer about the USA.Īlmost no synthetic caffeine is produced in the United States anymore. So, this glowing is removed by rinsing the caffeine with sodium nitrite, acetic acid, sodium carbonate and chloroform.Īnd the pure stuff is strong. However, unfortunately for the caffeine industry, the raw synthetic caffeine often glows - a bluish phosphorence - not a good look. The final touch is to add methyl chloride to produce the final product: methylated theophylline – otherwise known as synthetic caffeine. In turn, the uracil is processed and converted to theophylline. Then you combine urea and chloroacetic acid to produce a compound called uracil. By 1953, both Monsanto and Pfizer had synthetic caffeine factories up and running in America. On with the story…Known as ‘caffeine anhydrous’, synthetic caffeine was first developed by the Nazis in 1942 to keep caffeine supplies available during the embargoes emplaced by the War. In short, the estimated total synthetic caffeine imported into the USA annually is 7 million kilograms of caffeine powder. Mountain Dew packs in half a million kg of synthetic caffeine into its soft drinks for the US market. Pepsi and Coke needs over 1.6 million kilograms of synthetic caffeine for the US market alone. Today, the soft drinks market has enormous caffeine needs. 10 billion bottles were consumed during the war. And it left a generation of American men with a thirst for Coke for the rest of their lives. It was an important part of the war effort to improve morale. It sounds dodgy, wrong, futuristic, but you’ve likely consumed synthetic caffeine this week or even today.Ī century ago, caffeine added to soft drinks, energy drinks and caffeine tablets used to be derived from extracting the caffeine from tea leaves or coffee beans.īut the desire for caffeine has increased exponentially since then and scientists from Monsanto looked for cheaper ways to produce much greater industrial quantities of pure caffeine.īack in 1905, Monsanto started producing caffeine for Coca Cola in St Louis, Missouri using tea leaves to extract the precious caffeine and this long term partnership was the backbone of Monsanto before it became an enormous multinational.īy 1945, there were 4 main players manufacturing caffeine in the USA and following Coke’s huge popularity with GIs during the Second World War, they were struggling to cope with demand and foreign companies from Taiwan and Brazil were getting in on the market.Ĭoke’s strategy during the Second World War was to guarantee that every soldier should be able to get a coke for 5 cents anywhere on the battlefield – and that plan succeeded. Think you’ve never drunk synthetic caffeine?
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