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UCSD's love affair with Mountain Dew

by Chris Harrington

It is the best of drinks, it is the worst of drinks. It can give you energy, it can keep you up all night. It's yellow, it's green. It's Mountain Dew.

I'm not sure exactly when I came across Mountain Dew, but I'm sure that it wasn't love at first swig. Dew is not something that changes your life the first time it hits your palate. It's a rather gradual obsession. At first, you're intrigued by the sweetness and tickled by the consistency—eventually, however, with each sip you feel everything that Mountain Dew stands for. You drink in the ideology. It becomes not only a soft drink, but something to believe in.

Before Dew is a way of life, it is a soda. And the first thing you notice about it is that it, is yellow. Obnoxiously, brazenly yellow. There has been some controversy over the years, with some people claiming that Dew is green, but most resistance has been squashed. I've always felt that anybody that could look at any quantity of Dew, outside its can, and still cling to this green theory was, at the very least, color blind. At the very most, out of their minds. Mountain Dew is perhaps the yellowest thing in the world (with the possible exception of some of the more vivid parts of the Sun God). The green-people are obviously letting the tint of the two litre bottles distort their view.

Once it's yellowness is accepted (it will eventually be loved and respected, but at first it is merely accepted) then you begin to analyze the taste. It soon becomes apparent that the sweet sensation of Dew is unlike anything else on the market. Sweet but provocative; smooth but exciting. Sensual. Dew has a certain bubbly mildness that encourages you to drink not just a can, or two cans, but an entire six-pack. Let's face it, Coke and Pepsi are good for what they are—light, middle-of-the-road drinks to go with meals—but are severely lacking in the area of taste. The last few sips of any can of cola taste like exactly that—a can. This makes it nearly impossible to drink mass quantities of Coke or Pepsi without becoming bloated, sick, or both (although one condition often alleviates the other).

Mountain Dew, conversely, goes down smooth. It's streamline. You can drink a lot of it. It's slides down your throat and into your stomach so smoothly, as a matter of fact, that it doesn't spend much time hanging around once it's there. There's a relatively old proverb that says, "You Don't, Buy Mountain Dew, You Just Rent It." This is obviously commenting on the short amount of time between when you drink a Dew and your next trip to the restroom. No scientific studies have been done, but perhaps their is some validity to the rumor. Think about the amount of work your body has to do to change Coke into something that it can excrete. Now think about Mountain Dew. Any questions?

When you start breaking down Mountain Dew into its component parts, component ingredients, you begin to touch on the more practical and philosophical aspects of the drink. You begin to realize why it is the Nectar of the Gods, the elixir of life: First and, foremost is the caffeine. A sixer of Dew can keep you wired for three days. Not only does it have more caffeine—by a long shot—than any non-prescription drink, but, as mentioned earlier, it is conducive to being consumed in mass quantities. Consequently, students buy Mountain Dew by the case during finals week. Study for an hour, drink a Dew ....another hour, another Dew. When procrastination necessitates an all night study session, Mountain Dew, I've found, is the best study partner you can have.

Caffeine is not all that Dew can offer. ft has the most sugar. It has the most artificial flavor. It has the most , artificial color. It has yellow -aye number five.

This seemingly sickening list of ingredients leads naturally into the discussion of what Mountain Dew is, what it stands for. Mountain Dew is not particularly healthy; but, then again, it doesn't pretend to be either. Nobody's denying that Mountain Dew is loaded with caffeine, sugar and artificial colors. The Dew people pull no punches. Mountain Dew is what it is.

There's none of the trendy, health-conscious stuff in Mountain Dew. There's no "Diet Mountain' Dew. There's no Caffeine Free Mountain Dew. Dew is Dew. Take it or leave it. There will never be a New Taste of Mountain Dew. True Dewmen would never stand for it. Mountain Dew is a lot like its advertisements: it's about jumping over waterfalls and diving into a lake to catch a football.

If you've never tried a Dew and have always considered it one of those sweet drinks that you don't like, well, then maybe it's time you gave it a try. If you're one of those people that drink' Diet Coke and only Diet Coke (sometimes Tab, just for fun) then maybe you best stay away, from the yellow stuff. You just have to have that Mountain Dew sort of mentality.