Soda’s Big Comeback

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images, Addison Rae/Youtube, Pepsi/Youtube, @dualipaofficial/TikTok

In 2024, the only early-aughts star vying for a bigger comeback than Lindsay Lohan was soda. After a string of health campaigns banished two-liter bottles and flashy vending machines to the fringes of social consciousness in the 2010s, soda is back with a vengeance. Soft drink demand in the U.S. is higher than it’s been in years — Coca-Cola’s North American revenue jumped 12 percent last quarter, and amid squeezed budgets and soaring grocery costs, Keurig Dr. Pepper reported this summer that sales for refreshments like Canada Dry and Sunkist were growing, while coffee earnings had shrunk. The people have chosen, and we want carbonation.

It was only a matter of time before soda demand began bubbling over. Dirty soda, the Mormon-popular caffeine substitute turned TikTok trend, has been spilling beyond Utah’s state lines and onto our TV screens. Hulu’s gaggle of Mormon housewives hashed out their husbands’ infidelities over enormous jugs of raspberry-syruped Mountain Dew, and the wives’ go-to dirty-soda purveyor, Swig, got its own dupe in New York. And everywhere you look, people are doing unholy things with soda. Within the span of a month, we saw gas-station customers stirring vanilla protein milk into their Diet Cokes and Dua Lipa cheerfully concocting a Diet Coke–and–pickle-juice potion topped with pickled jalapeños. Even the Big Soda boardrooms started getting creative — 7Up released a pre-mixed Shirley Temple, and Dr. Pepper teamed up with Coffee Mate for its own take on dirty soda.

Meanwhile, Addison Rae went to bat for the industry’s biggest underdog with her summer sleeper hit “Diet Pepsi,” scoring herself a tenuous spot in the pop-girl pantheon. Pepsi & Co. managed to sustain the momentum in the lead-up to Gladiator II’s release by reviving a cult-classic commercial with Megan Thee Stallion and a sizable chunk of the NFL’s payroll.

Why soda now? It’s only become more clear just how bad it is for our bodies — for decades, studies have been linking high-fructose drinks to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, tooth decay, gout, and dementia. In 2023, the WHO deemed aspartame, the artificial sweetener used in most diet and sugar-free sodas, a possible carcinogen. And yet Diet Coke, which the New Yorker claimed had “gone flat” in 2018, has soared in popularity and cultural relevance in the past two years. (Many Diet Coke heads say the aspartame itself is what gives their beloved drink its je ne sais quoi and maybe also makes it so addictive. The WHO might agree.)

As wellness culture goes increasingly off the rails, signs of exhaustion are everywhere — even Bella Hadid, mistress of expensive tinctures, is smoking cigarettes in public these days. It’s become nearly impossible to keep up with the toxins lurking in everything from our cocktails to our kitchen spatulas. Alternatives marketed as “healthier” look scammier every day: This year, a class-action suit against the allegedly gut-healthy soda brand Poppi described the drink as “basically sugared water.” Meanwhile, a vast ecosystem of people purporting to care about “wellness” are railing against vaccines and drinking unpasteurized milk. At least aspartame can’t carry bird flu?